You don’t know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything.
BRANFORD MARSALISPop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.
More Branford Marsalis Quotes
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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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If I were like a lot of other people, then it wouldn’t be fun; but since I’m like me, it’s okay.
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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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I’m not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.
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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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Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.
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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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Humans are imperfect. That’s one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We’re on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.
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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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You hear it in your brain. Whatever makes sense. Some songs work well as quartet songs, sometimes they don’t.
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You know, being America, being the land of “number ones”, everyone wants to be a leader before they follow.
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So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.
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Everybody talks about finding your voice. Do your homework and your voice will find you.
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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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My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.
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