Les Paul

Paint pictures with sound. First, find your white-the deepest, roundest sound you can play on the guitar. Then, find your black-which is the most extreme tonal difference from white you can play. Now, just pick the note where you’ve got white, pick it where you’ve got black, and then find all those colors in between. Get those colors down, and you’ll be able to express almost any emotion on the guitar.?

This guitar is such a pal. It’s a psychiatrist. It’s a doggone bartender. It’s a housewife. This guy is everything. Whenever I find that I’ve got a problem, I’ll go pick my guitar up and play. It’s the greatest pal in the whole world.

You can’t go to the store and buy a good ear and rhythm.

I got the mumps. They threw me in a crib so I wouldn’t roll out onto the floor. And there’s a big bay window in my house, and that window stayed perfectly still until that train started to chug. At a certain speed, I could reach up and feel the pane, and that glass pane would vibrate. I said, Doggone, there’s got to be a reason for this. So I go to the kindergarten teacher, and she takes me to the science teacher, and the science teacher takes me to the library and reads it off to me — “This is called resonance.” That was the beginning.

To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren’t any.

A guitar is something you can hold and love and it’s never going to bug you. But here’s the secret about the guitar – it’s defiant. It will never let you conquer it. The more you get involved with it, the more you realize how little you know.

I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton… oh, there’s many more! I wouldn’t want to be like them, you understand, but I’d like to be equal, if you will.

Every day I look forward to getting with my instruments, trying new things.

The expression of freedom that is Jazz improvisation mirrors the ethos of the best parts of society.

Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one’s own.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress…so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.

In our local Baptist church, I sang in the choir and formed a gospel quartet. When our minister caught me messing with his guitar, he taught me three positions – one, four and five. After that, I taught myself to play.

The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial.

The true value of this music lies in an artist’s individual creativity and that unique process of expression which is Jazz.

Don’t be a perfectionist… leave that to the classical musicians.

I used to play pianos in bars. You know in hotels, you’d see guys playing piano with a snifter? That was me, with a painted-on mustache. I was about 15.

So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.

I developed in my head that I’m never any better than my last concert or the last time I played, so it’s like an audition each time. You get nervous just before going onstage. I still have that, but I think it’s more like concern. You’re concerned about the people – like meeting your in-laws for the first time.

I like what I hear other guys doing, but the thing that really attracts me is melodic playing.