Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture > Video Oral History Gallery

Video Gallery Clip Transcript: McCoy Tyner (with Dr. Billy Taylor)

MT: I start composing at the piano, I use the piano to write I like to hear my instrument in my ear, I think that it inspires me to write really I mean because you hear all the voices, and hear everything there I know a lot of guys who may sit down and write everything out and they could be on an airplane, which is good.

BT: I envy that. I can't do that.

MT: Not really, and not successfully, I mean, I guess we'd all put something down because we play the piano, we know these chords work, but the thing is, is there are a lot of sounds in the instrument that you know sometimes because I'm constantly like you're discovering things, like you know oh wow, this sounds ooo, that's interesting and putting different combination together, I don't have that, I'm not that formulized, I'm not a theorist, I don't really, I mean I studied theory in school but you know how it is when you play our kind of music, you know, it's like.

BT: You develop your own theory.

MT: You develop your own theory whatever that is and you just go ahead playing and put these things together and say oh wow, so that's why I like to utilize the instrument because you can come up with different combinations of sounds.