I always try to think of a vocabulary to match different musical situations.

I don't like to box myself in when I'm composing.

I always try to think of a vocabulary to match different musical situations.

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.

You have to know composition to be a good improviser.

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.

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.

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.

I like to hear melodies that go from one extreme to the next- saxophone to a bell to a whistle, for instance.

I remember times when the whole music scene was just flourishing.

If you listen to nature, all the sounds are done in a confident way. I'm trying to do that.

Creating sounds together with other musicians is something I've always liked doing.

I noticed that when it came time to improvise, my students would often make mistakes.

I think the best thing you can teach a person is how to learn. And once they discover their own individual approach to that - which is inside all of us - then all of a sudden, they've opened up a door of endless resources.

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'm trying to learn to really use space. My philosophy is that every time you interrupt space in a very confident, secure manner, then music happens.

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?

It wasn't until I got out of the Army and I heard Coltrane's record 'Coltrane,' when he was doing 'Inch Worm' and 'Out of This World,' that I thought, 'Oh my God, you can do that?' And then I thought, 'OK, I better go back and listen to Eric Dolphy a bit.' And then I said, 'Hmm, I better pull out these Ornette Coleman records.'

Life is short, and, once somebody is gone, they're gone.

Man, I used to go around and think, 'Oh my God, what must it be like to be going down the street, and someone asks you, 'What's your name?' and the reply would be, 'John Coltrane.' I couldn't imagine what that would be like.

Music has a way of getting under your skin.

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.

This is what really makes real jazz musicians: people coming out with their own voice.

To be a good improviser, you have to study composition as a parallel. Because what improvisation is, on a high level, is spontaneous composition.

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.

You can work on music a few lifetimes.

Sound is the vocabulary of nature.

The vocabulary of pleasure depends on the imagery of pain.

We live in a time when the words impossible and unsolvable are no longer part of the scientific community's vocabulary. Each day we move closer to trials that will not just minimize the symptoms of disease and injury but eliminate them.

If you're not ready to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary.

I always try to think of a vocabulary to match different musical situations.

"Stay" is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.

I wanted to define the vocabulary of a wedding both visually and intellectually. The book is about more than weddings or wedding dresses. It's a metaphor for women's lives, their creativity.

Science gives us a powerful vocabulary, and it is impossible to produce a vocabulary with which one can only say nice things.

One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

So far as the advocates of a constructed international language are concerned, it is rather to be wondered at how much in common their proposals actually have, both in vocabulary and in general spirit of procedure.

Arthur Young's Reflexive Universe - fascinating but too schematic to fit into my scheme. The most I could hope for was a sense of the vocabulary and some possible images.

We're looking to help our guitar buddies do their thing while at the same time we try to create something we might enjoy listening to ourselves. If anything we are trying to develop a vocabulary so we can converse more fluidly.

I think the most overused words in our vocabulary in the South are black and white.

Losing is not in my vocabulary.

There is a way in which all writing is connected. In a second language, for example, a workshop can liberate the students' use of the vocabulary they're acquiring.

Tired is not a word in my vocabulary.

In my eighties, my best friends are in their fifties, and I have many friends at university. It keeps one young, and up with the vocabulary. That's terribly important, especially for a writer.

My mother was a very literate person who had educated herself. She had an exceptional vocabulary.

With a very few exceptions, every word in the French vocabulary comes straight from the Latin.

The ambiguities of language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, are fascinating: how important connotation is, what is lost and what is gained in the linguistic transition.

First, we have to find a common vocabulary for energy security. This notion has a radically different meaning for different people. For Americans it is a geopolitical question. For the Europeans right now it is very much focused on the dependence on imported natural gas.

Pressure is a word that is misused in our vocabulary. When you start thinking of pressure, it's because you've started to think of failure.