Les Paul

The audience, they’re not professionals. They just love music. It isn’t necessary to play over their heads to be admired.

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.

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.?

It’s not technique — it’s what you have to say.

When you just get mixed up and there’s too much going on, then it’s time to pick up your guitar.

Music chooses her musicians.

When I got started in New York, if you were different from Miles and Dizzy it was very difficult.

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.

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

The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.

I’ve tried all my life to avoid copying. If I can’t be myself, there’s no point being in Jazz.

A Jazz musician is supposed to find his voice, find his niche and do his thing.

And there is a time where you can be beyond yourself. You can be better than your technique. You can be better than most of your usual ideas. And this is a whole other category that you can get into.

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know

It became a kind of a game, to remember the things that had happened five minutes ago. I would start making notes about the things I was doing, on an instrument that was foreign to me, the guitar, so it was just a fun way of doing cognitive therapy. I was none the wiser to it until I began to improve and my ability to speak began to come back.

The way I look at it, they’re all part of my musical diary, and I can listen to any one of them and it will bring up memories of what was going on at that time.

It’s not what they think, it’s about what’s best for the music.

I love it. When they stop imitating me then I’ll start wondering where I’m going wrong. Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new.

It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.