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One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.

Practicing is not only playing your instrument, either by yourself or rehearsing with others - it also includes imagining yourself practicing. Your brain forms the same neural connections and muscle memory whether you are imagining the task or actually doing it.

Rock guitarists usually do not wish to think trains of thought about anything but their own guitar playing during a long solo, and I could not play this way if I were not able to divide my attention between my ever changing musical environment and my instrument itself.

It's that kind of in-born music thing - I could pick up the guitar and play something. It's not something I consciously do.

For me, playing music is like meditating - I just play and don't really think about what I'm doing, I just let it happen.

Musicians tend to get bored playing the same thing over and over, so I think it's natural to experiment.

You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think.

Even if you're improvising, the fact that beforehand you know certain things will work helps you make those improvisations successful. It really helps to have a certain amount of knowledge about musical structure.

Most people learn to improvise on their own, listening to records, endless hours of noodling on their instrument in the bedroom with all their spare time. That's traditionally how people learn.

I realized that improvisers should probably always have time off. But musicians are always gigging and never have a chance to stop for a minute - unless something drastic occurs.