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My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.

Branford Marsalis

Walter Beasley is an anomaly: a successful performing musician who possesses the rare skill of understanding the musical process beyond the intuitive. T
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Skills Successful Understanding
One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.
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Band Listening Musician
The way to learn the language is to rip off other players. As Benny Golson told me, “We all start off sounding like other cats.
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Cat Player Rip
My dad was a musician, it was just what he did, like another guy’s dad drives a meat truck. Our house was normal. We weren’t taken with the fact our dad was a musician.
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Dad House Taken
The whole point is, give me a break with the standards. You go to the average jazz label and suggest a record and they want to know which standards you’re going to play. I’m saying let’s break the formula.
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Average Giving Play
My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.
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Jobs Music Song
What is jazz? It, It’s almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It’s a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.
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Asking Country Musical People
The piano is the X factor. People have a tough time following the structures when there’s no piano there, spelling it out. It makes it more easily understood, particularly to people who don’t know as much about music.
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People Piano Times Tough
So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.
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Jazz Music Students
What you have to do is play a couple of songs and then get off the stage because everything that trails it sounds stupid.
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Couple Sound Stupid Trails
It’s hard to get into Newsweek because, as more of our former intellectual magazines take on a pop focus, if there’s no buzz, there’s no interest.
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Culture Focus Intellectual
The biggest problem with American music right now, is that kids don’t listen. They come by it honestly, Americans don’t listen anyway.
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Biggest Country Kids People
You hear it in your brain. Whatever makes sense. Some songs work well as quartet songs, sometimes they don’t.
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Brain Sometimes Song
I like to make records sound good. I’m more like a reducer than a producer. If an artist cannot produce themselves, what’s the point?
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Artist Records Sound
When you’re dealing with music without words, titles are more a means of identification than anything else. What’s the point of getting lofty?
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Identification Mean Titles
his special ability enables Walter to communicate with aspiring musicians in a way that removes the sense of mystery that sometimes enshrouds our profession.
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Enshroud Profession Remove Special

My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.

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My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.

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