Stan Getz

It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it’s like the human voice

My dark sound could be heard across a room clearer than somebody with a reedy sound. It had more projection. My sound always seemed to fill a room.

As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.

The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception. All you can do is play melody. No matter how complicated it gets, it’s still a melody.

You don’t rehearse Jazz to death to get the camera angles.

As long as I can say what it is that I need to say, then I’ll fit whatever I’m trying to say around a melody.

I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel.

I look for a deep, gutty feelin’ in a guitar tone. I don’t use picks. People ask, “How you get that?” It’s just there. There’s a lot of people try to play real fast chords-da da da da da-that ain’t the hard, solid blues. It’s synthetic. It has not feeling to it. You sit down and play some funky, funky guitar. Take your time! Don’t rush it. Just let it come flowing through you. I can play guitar so funky, it’ll bring teardrops to your eyes.

Learn the tunes by playing the masters, learn expression by playing yourself.

I don’t consider myself a musician who has achieved perfection and can’t develop any further.

It bugs me when people try to analyze Jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not, it’s feeling.

I’ve found you’ve got to look back at the old things and see them in a new light.

The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.

There’s nobody plays like me and I don’t play like anybody else.

Jazz isn’t a what, it’s a how.

Some players get very philosophical and cerebral about Jazz. You don’t need any prologues, you just play.

But I have always suspected that one could substitute the Minuet of Haydn’s 98th symphony for the Minuet in Haydn’s 99th symphony without sensing a serious lack of coherence in either work.

The prospect of having to sit through one of Rachmaninov’s extended symphonies or piano concertos tends, quite frankly, to depress me. All those notes, and to what end?

Jazz is about being in the moment.

The thing I always default to is that I’ll always be here to write songs.