Musical Feel Quotes

Even though the music I make gathers influences from all over the place, I feel that the core of what I do comes from the jazz tradition. In terms of improvisation, interaction, feel and overall concept, Jazz is my main source of information and inspiration.

I've had the chance to watch Metallica's James Hetfield from the side of the stage night after night, listening to his monitors, and his playing is so perfect. Slash is an amazing lead guitarist, but when you listen to his rhythm playing, you can hear how he pulls everything together with such a great feel, which is the most important thing.

I would say when you're dealing with live musicians and musicality, the warmth of a live instrument brings a certain feel to a song that is really hard, sometimes, to get from synthesized instruments.

The distance between me and Benny [Goodman], was that I was trying to play a musical thing, and Benny was trying to swing. Benny had great fingers; I'd never deny that. But listen to our two versions of 'Star Dust.' I was playing; he was swinging.

I don't like to go into the studio with all the songs worked out and planned before hand ... you've got to give the band something to use its imagination on as well. That can make a very ordinary song come alive into something totally different ... the X-factor - so important in rock and roll - which is the feel.

I don't use a Beatmap; I don't use any click track. Any time I count off, it's just in my heart. Sometimes I'll go off the feel of a crowd, like if they way they're bouncing is a little quicker than the song, I might kick up the tempo a little bit. I see where the crowd is at. It's nothing drastic, but all the tempos are from my internal clock.

Dad was pretty solid. He had great grooves and there was occasional moments of sheer brilliance with fills and things, but in general, the sheer brilliance is the simplicity, how much groove, how much feel he had, all the subtleties that we miss.

Regardless of what you play, the biggest thing is keeping the feel going.

Even though I'll do finger warm-ups that go up and down the neck to build up my chops and dexterity, I never, ever sit around and practice the actual licks I'm gonna play live. If you do, then you'll be all worried about the complexity of getting the fingering right and everything else about it, as opposed to the feel.

I've listened to musicians who say that using a metronone makes you robotic, that it decreases your 'feel.' That's ridiculous. Either you have feel or you don't. Feel is one of those intangibles that can't be taught. But if you do have feel, using a metronome will allow you to play cleaner - and that'll make your 'feel' have more, well, 'feeling.'

My playing is all about feel. I'm completely self taught: I never took any lessons or anything.

People think jazz music is all standards and the Great American Songbook. But it's really about the sensibility, the feel you bring to the music.

A song like 'When The Levee Breaks' has a very simple pattern, but it's hard to give it that feel that my dad gave it.

But when you have to deal with notes, and to be able to make a full definition of what a sound is - if you are not around that environment, then you'll find you lose that feel, that momentum, you lose all that.

If you're a lay person listening to jazz, you don't necessarily understand everything that's happening within the form. But you get the sense of it, the feel of it, because you're getting to hear something that develops right in front of your face.

I don't like to do any editing on guitars. I think the more editing you do, it just takes away from the feel of the performance.

You get this really cool groove when you're playing just piano, bass, and drums where everyone's sort of feeling each other's space, which is the only way to put it, but it really is true, and everyone's sort of sitting in their own pocket. It's kind of jazz-like.

I think I have a sound or a certain feel in certain harmonies in the way I construct melodies.