Stan Getz

Records used to be documents, but now record companies want product.

We recorded to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records.

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

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

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.

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.

Jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

At times as a performer they segregated us in some of theatres.

You may be sitting in a room reading this book. Imagine one note struck upon the piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room – proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle.

Playing the guitar is like telling the truth – you never have to worry about repeating the same [lie] if you told the truth. You don’t have to pretend, or cover up. If someone asks you again, you don’t have to think about it or worry about it because there it is. It’s you.

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.?

Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.

I’ll keep evolving and put that into my songs.

I went through a struggle, and I really needed to get myself together and connect with my purpose, which is music.

Music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential.

Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and charm and gaiety to life.

Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.

In this trumpet I hear our icons and the sound of the future.

My improvisations are a beguiling mixture of the vertical and the horizontal.

If I could read it, I could play it.

Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument. This is a comprehensive technique . . . a feeling for the keyboard that will allow you to transfer any emotional utterance into it. What has to happen is that you develop a comprehensive technique and then say, forget that. I’m just going to be expressive through the piano.