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Don’t just play the licks you know. We’re all improvising all the time – it’s good to recognize that and embrace it.

Bobby McFerrin

I do a lot of performing, but don’t get a chance to go to the studio and write good music.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Chance Performing Writing
I use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Color Music Use
Each of us might give that phrase a different meaning. It’s open to interpretation, and one song becomes a thousand songs. I love that.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Deserves Each Love Good Song
If I have a mission it’s to make everyone who comes to my concerts leave feeling a heightened sense of freedom to play, sing, and enjoy themselves.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Feel Heightened Psychologist Sing
I’d actually been making my living as an organist with bands since I was probably 15 or 16 years old, and then as a senior in high school I put together a jazz quintet called The Bobby Mack Jazz Quintet.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Actually Experience People School Senior Years
When I was figuring out how to perform solo, I wanted to move back and forth between bass riffs, melody, and harmony, so I often used sounds instead of — or alongside — the words of a song.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Alongside Figuring Harmony Perform Song
I found that if I sang a line using the consonants, vowels, shadings, and inflection we recognize as human language sounds, people responded as if I were talking to them.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Language Recognize Responded Sound Talking
Music is still part of my spiritual life. Sometimes I sing my prayers. When I get audiences singing, I hope I’m helping them feel connected to something beyond themselves.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Prayer Singing Spiritual
I actually fought the idea for a while because it seemed almost too radical, but it became obvious what I was supposed to be doing.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Actually Almost Fought Idea Suppose
This is what I want everyone to experience at the end of my concert… everyone has this sense of rejoicing. I don’t want them to be blown away by what I do,
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Joy Real Thinking
You keep going forward, fearful or not, living from moment to moment. That’s how life is.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Fearful Forward Keep Life
Then I came up with this crazy idea just to walk out on the stage with no band at all and just start singing whatever came to mind.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Crazy Ideas Mind
I couldn’t do anything without faith. I couldn’t open up my eyes, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t sing.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Eye Speak Walks
I think play and joy and feeling good deserve more of our time. I don’t see why adults are supposed to grow out of those things.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Deserve More Play Thinking
One song may be Bach, the next blues, a song from TV, or a nursery rhyme or jazz piece.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Nursery One Piece Rhyme Song Television
The audience is like my instrument. It’s not just me up there, it’s collaborative.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Audience Instruments Performing

Don’t just play the licks you know. We’re all improvising all the time – it’s good to recognize that and embrace it.

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Don’t just play the licks you know. We’re all improvising all the time – it’s good to recognize that and embrace it.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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