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.?

I am very aware that so little has happened to the electric guitar from the time that it was conceived to now; where there are so little changes made where there should be drastic changes made. If we were to put our heads together and start thinking about modern technology we would be much more advantaged with the electric guitar than we are. I think that we’ve been stagnant for many years.

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.

We go in there and we work on altering those ideas and in many cases go in different directions.

When rock came in, people didn’t know what to do. Even Sinatra, he didn’t know what to do. The music was changing. And it’s changing now.

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

Music’s been around a long time, and there’s going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it’s a big record, that’s the frosting on the cake, but music’s the main meal.

I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once.

I have a deep respect for harmony, melodic patterns and form.

In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it’s a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don’t listen.

Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.

Music is the great arbiter of the world, the key to central harmony and a necessary requirement of human emotion.

Stevie didn’t use the technology to drive the song. He used it to enhance. I use the tools to further my work, I don’t use my work to further the tools.

Good Jazz is when the leader jumps on the piano, waves his arms and yells. Fine Jazz is when a tenorman lifts his foot in the air. Great Jazz is when he heaves a piercing note for 32 bars and collapses on his hands and knees. A pure genius of Jazz is manifested when he and the rest of the orchestra runaround the room while the rhythm section grimaces and dances around their instruments.

A series of vibrations. What does it matter, the source of the catalyst?

I never really thought about becoming a professional musician.

Apparently Jazz is now considered high art and the average person has trouble understanding it.

You can’t copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling.

As long as musicians have passion for spontaneity and creating something that’s never been before, Jazz will flourish.

A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.

They’re not particular about whether you’re playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.