Quotes About Composition

My proposition for a regiment of ten companies is four of Sikhs, two of Hill Rajputs, two of Punjabi Mohammedans, two of Pathans. In Peshawar, if you like, you might have a third of Pathans.

A prose work of some length that has something wrong with it.

The note is the same, I fancy, be the octave high or low.

Photographing a cake can be art.

'Somebody's Calling Me' was written in my sleep, and the original was just the piano and the beat and the singing.

I don't like to move the camera that much anyway.

Any nude is a something you setup in front of the camera.

I also know what looks good before the camera, how to move the camera, and how to get a story on the screen.

Cast is everything.

Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century.

If, early on, you know how things are put together, then you can build. The architect is in charge of making - he is not an artist.

I have to write pretty songs; that's what gets them on the charts.

As a coach, you look for the elements. Sort of like a chemist, you want to say, 'Okay, here we have all of the parts,' and make what you think will be a successful line.

I usually speak with all my drummers so that I write my songs with them in mind, and we'll have bass sounds, choir sounds, and then you can multi-task with all these orchestral sounds. Through the magic medium of technology, I can play all kinds of sounds - double bass and stuff.

There's only seven chords, so you got to use the same ones over and over. It's all in what you do with them.

A chorus is not easy.

For me, music is in the choice of what not to play as much as in what you've chosen to play.

I think my melodies are superior to my lyrics.

You know too well the forces which compose their army to dread their superior numbers.

The spirituality of the music is something that I always search for in what I do, because I think that music has to have everything inside: a strong architecture, a support, the emotion.

Many MIDI files contain entire musical compositions. Because MIDI supports only 16 channels, however, no more than 16 different instruments can play at any time, and one of those is the key-based percussion instrument.

I've learned that I've just barely scratched the surface of knowledge of the profession, and I have deep envy of and appreciation for filmmakers who really, truly understand the physics, the design of filmmaking. They can do story and color and composition and geometry and math and science all at once.

To some extent, I'm mildly surprised by every new piece, by the precise path that my interest takes.

It really surprises me that people in this day and age still write such busy music and fill up every space with layer upon layer of sound... it's like musical landfill.