Words matter. These are the best Roscoe Mitchell Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
To be a good improviser, you have to study composition as a parallel. Because what improvisation is, on a high level, is spontaneous composition.
Creating sounds together with other musicians is something I’ve always liked doing.
I’m approaching a period in my life though where I’d like to be totally absorbed into music, doing concerts, writing something. Basically, that IS what I am doing.
I’m the kind of guy that if I go to a concert and hear something that knocks me out, I don’t want to be left out of that. I’m going to try to get into that, and I’m running back home to practice.
I like to hear melodies that go from one extreme to the next- saxophone to a bell to a whistle, for instance.
I’m into something that definitely does require your attention, and with that, you’re not going to run out of things to do. You’re never going to be the master of music.
I’ve always been interested in shaping music in odd ways, with odd riffs and that’s been probably something that I’ve continued on with my studies with improvisation as I’m working with people.
My central quest was to have a piece played on the saxophone sound like more than one instrument, exploiting different registers and wide interval leaps.
Music has a way of getting under your skin.
I don’t like to box myself in when I’m composing.
You can work on music a few lifetimes.
If you’re playing with a number of people, there are all sorts of textures, all kinds of possibilities you can get into. So why just play a theme together and then take solos?
When you can make a good, strong musical connection with people, that’s always there. That’s not often that that happens.
I just consider myself a student, trying to learn more about it.
I felt that I had been influenced by being in the city enough and I wanted to go off by myself to see what was going on. I remember going out there and looking in the mirror and thinking I wasn’t anything.
Life is short, and, once somebody is gone, they’re gone.
I remember times when the whole music scene was just flourishing.
What I try to impart to a musician is to really try to practice the instrument in a really sincere way. Learn as much about music as you possibly can. Learn composition. Study to try to create compositions of your own and put your own personal touch on your music.
This is what really makes real jazz musicians: people coming out with their own voice.
What I’m after is a composed music that will sound like improvised music when improvisors play it. You shouldn’t be able to tell what parts are being improvised and what parts were written out beforehand; it should sound like the same music.
If you listen to nature, all the sounds are done in a confident way. I’m trying to do that.
I noticed that when it came time to improvise, my students would often make mistakes.
