Stan Getz famous quotes

03-28-2025

A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other's ideas.
-- Stan Getz

#Music #Ideas #Conversation
My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often - in fact, mostly - at the expense of everything else in my life.
-- Stan Getz

#Spring #Perfection #Way
You can read all the textbooks and listen to all the records, but you have to play with musicians that are better than you.
-- Stan Getz

#Music #Play #Textbooks
Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.
-- Stan Getz

#Music #Art #Giving
There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. they are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence.
-- Stan Getz

#Individuality #Quality #Four
I practiced saxophone eight hours a day for the first two years I played.
-- Stan Getz

#Years #Two #Eight
If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice.
-- Stan Getz

#Play #Voice #Saxophone
The value of jazz still has to be clarified. People involve themselves with its superficialities without digging for its soul.
-- Stan Getz

#Music #People #Soul
Itâ€™s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. Itâ€™s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something Iâ€™ve never gotten the hang of.Â But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And thatâ€™s what jazz music is all about.
-- Stan Getz

#Alphabet #Jazz #Language
The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.
-- Stan Getz

#Challenges #Body #Saxophone
When I got this saxophone, it became a religion. There wasn't TV, there wasn't much money, and there was just a real dedication.... I never thought of it as an art. It was just work that I loved. Not just work, but work that I loved. I loved it so much, I would play it if nobody listened to it. Any jazz musician, if there's nobody around to listen, would play just for the sheer joy of improvising music.
-- Stan Getz

#Art #Real #Dedication
You don't rehearse jazz to death to get the camera angles.
-- Stan Getz

#Music #Cameras #Jazz
I cannot play a lie. I have to believe in what I play or it won't come out.
-- Stan Getz

#Music #Lying #Believe
Records used to be documents, but now record companies want product.
-- Stan Getz

#Records #Want #Jazz
My dark sound could be heard across a room clearer than somebody with a reedy sound. It had more projection. My sound always seemed to fill a room.
-- Stan Getz

#Dark #Rooms #Sound
I learn something new every day - to edit, to take out all the extraneous matter and stress form, logic, and content. I try to play beautiful music.
-- Stan Getz

#Beautiful #Stress #Play
I never have any trouble playing anything I can think of. The trouble is in thinking of what to play.
-- Stan Getz

#Thinking #Play #Trouble
I've always regretted the fact that I've never formally studied and learned the mechanics of writing music.
-- Stan Getz

#Regret #Writing #Facts
I learn something new every day.
-- Stan Getz

#Jazz #Something New
We recorded to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records.
-- Stan Getz

#Music #Records
You know, when I'm playing, I think of myself in front of the Wailing Wall with a saxophone in my hands, and I'm davening, I'm really telling it to the Wall.
-- Stan Getz

#Wall #Thinking #Hands
I never consciously tried to conceive of what my sound should be...
-- Stan Getz

#Sound #Should
Switch to piano! No. Really, if you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice. Of course, it would be best if you could actually sing with your own voice. The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. Therefore, the challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument or 'voice' that is outside of your body. I love that challenge and have for over forty-five years. As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.
-- Stan Getz

#Art #Years #Play
The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception.Â All you can do is play melody.Â No matter how complicated it gets, it's still a melody.
-- Stan Getz

#Play #Voice #Matter
I appreciate men like Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins very much.
-- Stan Getz

#Men #Appreciate
I came from an era when we didn't use electronic instruments. The bass wasn't even amplified. The sound was the sound you got.
-- Stan Getz

#Use #Bass #Eras
I compulsively reach for perfection in music, often at the expense of everything else in my life.
-- Stan Getz

#Music #Perfection #Expenses
I played in rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands.
-- Stan Getz

#Band #Jazz #Kind
Life is too full of distractions nowadays. When I was a kid we had a little Emerson radio and that was it. We were more dedicated. We didn't have a choice.
-- Stan Getz

#Kids #Choices #Radio

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