Herb Ellis on his thought process while playing guitar.

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Herb Ellis on his first guitar.

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Herb Ellis discusses his ability to perform to a crowd.

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Transcription

Q: “You really don’t listen to yourself play, do you? When you’re performing, your’re not really listening to what you’re playing…”

A: “Not really yet because the way I play, I'm singing inside what I'm playing at the same time. I'm actually composing it in my head verbally sort of singing it and putting it through the fingers on the guitar. That's the way I play music, but I mean, I don't have ... we all have our pet little phrases that we know by heart, but I'm trying to do and play from the mind all the time, you know. Which means I'm singing it and people saying, "You make funny faces." That's why I do, because I'm singing it and I'm playing it at the same time, you know. Instead of just like having a bunch of things under my fingertips that you could just play while you're half asleep or half awake. I tried never to play like that because then you're really not creating jazz when you're doing that, in my opinion, you know.”