As Eric Dolphy said 'Once you play the music, it's in the air. It's gone'. And that's true. But when you record it, it comes back to haunt you sometimes. John Abercrombie More Quotes by John Abercrombie More Quotes From John Abercrombie To be creative and spontaneous, you have to live with imperfection. John Abercrombie imperfectioninspiringfunny Every time I listen back to solos of mine I'll hear something I like and then another phrase that I can't stand. You have to live with what you play. And the recording medium puts that on us. When I play live gigs I don't think so much like that. John Abercrombie phrasesplaythinking If you listen to a lot of music, it gradually seeps into your consciousness or your unconsciousness and comes out in your music. John Abercrombie unconsciousnessconsciousnessifs Schlepping all of the equipment is the part I hate more than anything. John Abercrombie i-hatehateinspirational The sound and proper exercise of the imagination may be made to contribute to the cultivation of all that is virtuous and estimable in the human character. John Abercrombie imaginationexercisecharacter In the studio, if things go wrong, you stop things and fix them. I have never been in a recording studio, really, where the people in the booth were not interested in making a very good album. It's often a light-hearted atmosphere but serious at the same time. John Abercrombie goodyoutimepeople I don't remember what was going through my mind, but what was going through my body was fear and terror. I had been on the road with Johnny and working gigs and playing a lot of the organ clubs. John Abercrombie roadfearmindremember You're just sort of searching for this 'thing' and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. All music is imperfect, but in jazz since you're improvising, at least the way I play, I'm trying to follow my train of thought in a solo. John Abercrombie youmusicsometimesway Classical musicians do this all the time. They want perfection. So they piece things together. Eight bars of this and six bars of that. Glenn Gould said that with a recording he wanted to make perfect versions of pieces. John Abercrombie perfectionperfecttogethertime On record dates like that I never felt too nervous because everything was really overdubbed. When we did that album, we were in the studio for probably a week, so you had a lot of opportunity to fix things. John Abercrombie everythingneveryouopportunity I grew up listening to Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, guys with blues backgrounds. John Abercrombie guysbluesuplistening The music is fun. The big difference performing it live is that we might get a little more heated, not as subdued, we'll stretch things out more. It's how you stay fresh after such a long time in the business. John Abercrombie youmusicbusinesstime Take '39 Steps'. When I finished writing it, I counted the number of measures in the composition. I always do this because I am interested in the length of a song. So I counted this one a couple of times because 39 is an unusual number of measures for a song. John Abercrombie i-amalwayswritingsong I don't think anybody really super-consciously tries to develop a style to play. John Abercrombie anybodythinkstyleplay I started out trying to play more straight-ahead jazz. I went to Berklee in the early '60s when it was a brand new school, and so there was no fusion music. There wasn't a lot of mixing together of different kinds of music at that time, so jazz was kind of pure jazz. John Abercrombie musictogethertimeschool I think once I started writing my own music and having my own bands, that's when I got more of a focus on what I wanted to do, personally. John Abercrombie thinkmy-ownmusicfocus The way I evolved was playing straight-ahead jazz into playing more fusion-type stuff just because I was young enough to get into it. As I get older, I find myself coming back to where I kind of started. John Abercrombie backmyselfenoughway When we improvise freely - that is, without a structure - it tends to sound more like 20th century classical music, more like a classical ensemble improvising, as opposed to a free-jazz group, where you're more used to hearing saxophones honking. John Abercrombie groupyoumusicsound
