Quotes About Creativity

Initially, I just used the guitar as a prop. I'd pose with it in front of a mirror in my Kiss makeup when I was skipping school. Then I figured out how to play the main riff to Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water' on just the E string. Next, my old man showed me how to play barre chords, and that's when things started getting really heavy.

I've really gone into business since I got the 6 string, which was like starting all over.

I'd love to do a book with scratch n' sniff pages and pieces of string and plastic attached to the pages, you know?

That's the only way to do it. Just like an actor. You can get a great performance if you do a bunch of takes and edit it. You find the moments and string them together.

While I'm working, I stick with music that won't distract me - the dub stylings of Scientist and King Tubby, maybe some Beethoven string quartets.

Whether it's string writing or whatever, I try to write for what each instrumentalist can do best.

For anybody to say well this is not Hip Hop and that's not Hip Hop, that is not the way the formula was laid down. It was for the people who were going to continue take anything musically and string it along.

With the a cappella groups, every voice is like one string on a guitar, one note on the piano, or one cymbal, and you don't have the luxury of falling back on anything.

I've cried over string arrangements.

My son and I run a string company, and he has a studio there, and I go down sometimes and we'll record.

It's great if you can afford to carry a string section on the road with you, but most people are used to the idea of just a keyboard player creating those string sounds.

Depending on where I am in the process, sometimes I have a page count and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I have an hour count; sometimes I'm just happy to string a few words together. I do keep pretty rigorous hours, because otherwise you never get anything done.

I hear these melodies. I hear horn lines and string lines. That's what's fun about recording with an orchestra.

I don't want to look back at my career and see a string of incredibly commercial projects that don't have much heart. I'm looking for things that have soul.

For me personally, I think too much emphasis is put on, 'Okay, how cool are my moves?' and, 'How do I string them together?' 'How do I get this move in the match within this time limit?' and that's it.

I was getting bored and, I think, being a real pest. I remember Brando coming and sitting on the bed and cutting out the most exquisite paper fish, with detailed scales and fins. Then he took a hotel pen and a piece of string and made a fishing pole.

It's important to be a divergent musician and do a little bit of everything, except you have to make sure your fans are aware of it and that you string them along the right way.

Producing isn't just making beats on a beat machine. It's bringing together these string players with this flute player and this singer, and telling them to all work in the key of C major... You bring these people together and let them all cook.

I can make a record with six-part string arrangements and the best musicians in the world and have it be not genuine. I'd rather make a genuine record that I truly stand behind and have it fall where it may.

You know, I never went to music school, and it's always seen as this very proper, serious thing to compose a string arrangement.

I love the string band. I love the sound of it, the possibilities of it, I love the physical sensation of creating and performing in it. It's my voice.

I love finding out how authors work, because it can either go full Carrie in 'Homeland,' with loads of Post-it Notes and string on the wall and they know everything that's happening in the plot - or they let the characters tell them where they want to go and what happens next.

I would say that Beethoven's late string quartets are the nearest to God that we'll ever get.

For me, playing music while I write is important. Several of the romantic scenes in 'Paris' were written with Debussy's 'String Quartet,' his 'L'Apres-midi d'une Faune,' or Canteloube's 'Songs of the Auvergne' playing in the background.