Thelonious Monk Quotes About Music

Quotes about: Music

• I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Years, Play

• Trying to explain music is like trying to dance architecture.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Trying, Rock N Roll

• Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Memorable, Thinking

• A note can be as small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Imagination, World

• I don't have a definition of Jazz. You're just supposed to know it when you hear it.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Definitions, Jazz

• At this time the fashion is to bring something to jazz that I reject. They speak of freedom. But one has no right, under pretext of freeing yourself, to be illogical and incoherent by getting rid of structure and simply piling a lot of notes one on top of the other. There's no beat anymore. You can't keep time with your foot. I believe that what is happening to jazz with people like Ornette Coleman, for instance, is bad. There's a new idea that consists in destroying everything and find what's shocking and unexpected; whereas jazz must first of all tell a story that anyone can understand.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Fashion, Believe

• After two takes you're imitating yourself.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Two, Jazz

• I don't know where jazz is going. Maybe it's going to hell. You can't make anything go anywhere. It just happens.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Anything Goes, Jazz

• I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Pieces, Jazz

• If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Bops, Jazz

• I find my inspiration in myself.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Inspiration, Jazz

• Man, that cat [Ornette Coleman] is nuts.

  Thelonious Monk

  Music, Cat, Men

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin