Charlie Parker

Master your instrument, master the music and then forget all that and just play.

Music is your experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.

The time is now.

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

Once I could play what I heard inside me, that’s when I was born.

I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That’s when I was born.

When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it’s composition.

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I ‘d shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can’t pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that’s how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.

You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and be yawning your head off.

Anyone who doesn’t give [his debut album, The College Dropout] a perfect score is lowering the integrity of the magazine

I’m still searching even today for a sound, like the guy that’s searching for a home. I haven’t been able to find that completely. I’m satisfied at times with the sound of my guitar… but it is a little sound that I hear but I can’t tell anybody about it. I don’t know how. But if I ever get it, I’ll know.

I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns.

I was probably six years old when I first sang before an audience.

I think Ive done the best I could have done. But I keep wanting to play better, go further. There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I havent yet done. When I was younger I thought maybe Id reached that peak. But Im 86 now, and if I make it through to next month, Ill be 87. And now I know it can never be perfect, it can never be exactly what it should be, so you got to keep going further, getting better.

If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterward.

I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself.

Knowledge speaks, wisdom listens.

Blues is to Jazz what yeast is to bread; without it, it’s flat.

Jazz is the sound of surprise.

Everything I’ve ever done was out of fear of being mediocre.

You explore beautiful songs and create your own interpretation of them.