If I were like a lot of other people, then it wouldn’t be fun; but since I’m like me, it’s okay.
BRANFORD MARSALISThe way to learn the language is to rip off other players. As Benny Golson told me, “We all start off sounding like other cats.
More Branford Marsalis Quotes
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If it’s not going to sound like Terrapin Station, what’s the point of playing Terrapin Station?
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Everybody talks about finding your voice. Do your homework and your voice will find you.
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I don’t care who likes it or buys it. Because if you use that criterion, Mozart would have never written Don Giovanni, Charlie Parker never would have played anything but swing music. There comes a point at which you have to stand up and say, this is what I have to do.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.
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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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Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.
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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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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 don’t know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything.
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