Playing notes is the basic idea of music, but it’s an impression, and a shallow one. It’s not enough to play the notes.
What I really have to do as a musician is everything that is not in the notation.
The same way I need time with my instruments to interpret notes, I need time with people, to understand and interpret them.
It’s the things I notice when I’m not with my guitar or at the piano that I find so interesting and want to explore later through the soundboard, the strings, bridges, keys and petals.
Playing music is mostly about this: listening to the human heart as it encounters, accepts, and learns to live from whatever rubs up against it.
