Quotes About Composition

In Degas's compositions with several dancers, their steps, postures and gestures often resemble the almost geometric, formal letters of an alphabet, whereas their bodies and heads are recalcitrant, sinuous and individual.

Whereas Schaeffer and Henry were working like samplers, their idea was to capture those sounds which couldn't be serially calibrated because they were too complex in character.

There's such a huge difference between a great arrangement of riffs and a song. Sometimes the two can be the same. But the difference is a song doesn't necessarily need a riff, whereas a riff doesn't necessarily mean you've got a good song on your hands.

'Spellbound' has a lot of guitar playing on it, obviously, but I wanted to keep it with a more straightforward beat. It doesn't have so many stops and things like that. Whereas if you listen to 'Majestic 12,' that's like a little symphony.

My popularity has to do with the divorce between modern art, where everything is obscure, and the viewer who often feels he needs a professor to tell them whether it's good or not. I believe a painting has to talk directly to the viewer, with composition, color and design, without a professor to explain it.

Milionaria' is the first song I've composed and I published in Catalan, it's also the first song I do inspired by Catalan rumba. I started it in Seville while I was waiting at the airport and I finished it in Barcelona.

Yes, when I come up with ideas on my own, it's almost always a melody, just as often an instrument or bassline as it is a vocal. But it is a single, linear, monophonic thing. Something you could hum or whistle.

Elliott Carter does not write the kind of music that the kids go off to school whistling.

As a director, you're looking for ways to tell the story with the whole image and not primarily dialogue.

Any composer should be able to synthesize the primary feelings that the characters are going through in the movie.

I believe that, in any novel of mine, the principal objective is the construction of the whole.

You have to have that organizational principle behind the song.

The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance.

I had no idea what those cords were in the bridge of 'Prisoner In Disguise' when I wrote them. I had to go over to Don Gorman, the piano player, and ask what in the world I was playing.

The process of composing the film score for each movie is completely different. They all have their own personality and their own completely different life, but there's never been a formula. Each time, it's a new thing.

I like making sounds and putting it together, I'm not just a singer or a producer.

Most of the time, I write songs with the arrangements all at once, in my head. There's the producer side of me that's always thinking sounds, like, 'Wouldn't this be a great sound if it existed to put in front of a song, to open it up, and then, when it did its thing, something else would happen?

People will go through 50 beats from a producer and pick the best ones, go make a song on that beat. That's cool, but someone coming to me and hearing what I've been working on, picking out pieces of all of that, and then adding some of their own ideas is way more exciting.

A lot of producers don't have any musical education. I couldn't make the music I make without playing the piano.

I love songs with, like, six or seven or eight different things going on at once, and that's just me.

I have not thought of pairing with somebody for music direction and will continue composing music by myself.

I'm getting to compose music for diverse language films from all over the country.

I always think, 'What does this picture mean? What's the best place to put my camera? Do I have anything extra in the picture, things in the background that will distract? Am I in the basic position that will give the essential things for this picture but not too much?'

The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end.