Joe Pass Quotes & Sayings

I don't remember that I copied any guitar player note-for-note. But I remember copying Charlie Parker note for note. — Joe Pass

You can't think and play. If you think about what you're playing the playing becomes stilted. You have to just focus on the music I feel, concenctrate on the music, focus on what you're playing and let the playing come out. Once you start thinking about doing this or doing that, it's not good. What you are doing is like a language. You have a whole collection of musical ideas and thoughts that you've accumulated through your musical history plus all the musical history of the whole world and it's all in your subconscious and you draw upon it when you play — Joe Pass

I grew up playing the guitar. I started when I was nine, and by the time I was nine and a half or ten, I was doing seven or eight hours' practice every day. I did two hours' practice at six o'clock in the morning before I went to school, and another two hours as soon as I got home from school in the afternoon. Then I did four hours at night before I went to bed. I did that until I was fourteen or fifteen. — Joe Pass

I'm a little tired. I haven't been out for more than five or six weeks in the States, and that's really a lot for me. You know, to me, music is important, it's the way I make my living and I like it and I enjoy playing. But it's not the most important thing in my life - that's my family. — Joe Pass

Guitarists should be able to pick up the guitar and play music on it for an hour, without a rhythm section or anything. — Joe Pass

Using drugs didn't help me to play, all it did was to hang me up for about fifteen years. — Joe Pass

Learn everything you know in all keys. — Joe Pass

If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterward. — Joe Pass

My father would say, 'Play a scale,' and I'd play one and he'd say, 'What about the rest? There must be one above,' so we'd figure them out. I'd start the scale on the root of the chord and I'd go as far as my hand would reach without going out of position, say, five frets, and then I'd go all the way back. So when ! practised I'd start right away on scales. As well as the usual ones, I'd play whole tone scales, diminished, dominant sevenths, and chromatic scales. Every chord form, all the way up, and this took an hour. — Joe Pass