Quotes About Composition

Every single song on 'Torches' was a little self-contained pop song, so there wasn't any fat on the songs; there wasn't a lot to cut.

Every time I want to impress someone about samples and hip-hop, I play 'Portrait of Tracy.' It's one of the greatest bass players ever doing a whole composition with only the two harmonics of electric bass; then a three-second loop in it became every great R&B song in five-year intervals.

You can only learn orchestration if you have the possibility of using an orchestra.

Nothing can be divided into more parts than it can possibly be constituted of. But matter (i.e. finite) cannot be constituted of infinite parts.

Most of my collaborations, certainly post - Howard Ashman but even with Howard, are music first.

Musical composition, about which I know little, is a complicated art, and some contemporary music may be the equivalent of a complex abstract painting.

Everything must work in concert. Composition is important, but so are many other things, from content to the way colours work with or against each other.

This continuity of sound and form was something that I became really interested in from working with Ligeti. He was always going on about how form has to be continuous.

The thing that makes me want to write a piece of music is having something to talk about, you know? Something I want to get across. Because I'm a composer, music is my first language, and that's what I reach for when I want to convey something.

I score everything by hand on manuscript paper and then make copies.

I don't think I've ever spent more than an hour on any one song, but that doesn't count the thinking that goes on beforehand.

I was really into the music of Cream after I finished composing the music for 'BTTB.'

To be here drinking a Coke can influence the process of musical creation as much as anything.

I did playwriting, creative writing, short story, novelization.

Music is all about creativity.

In terms of creativity, both are equally satisfying. Music album is for yourself, where you compose songs and stuff like that, and in films, you have a story, characters, and songs penned by someone else.

I think all of The Beatles were from an era when certainly playing was important to them, and they were cutting edge. But for all time, they're master composers.

It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table.

The most interesting aspect for me, composing exclusively with patterns, is that there is not one organizational procedure more advantageous than another, perhaps because no one pattern ever takes precedence over the others.

We worked very hard to make the lyrics suit the music. I can't, like Elton John, for example, compose by lyrics. Elton has a great talent for that. Whatever you give him, including your questions, he composes in half an hour and makes a great song out of it.

I am talented enough to compose internationally.

I finally wasn't interested in writing music that played while actors talked.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

I know, there really is an ?i' in architecture. But it's not a capital ?I', calling attention to itself, dominating discussion. The lower-case character fits neatly within the word. Its there only because it fulfills requirements for proper spelling and pronunciation.