Quotes About Composition

There is much modern music that is better adapted to a wind combination than to a string, although for obvious reasons originally scored for an orchestra. If in such cases the interpretation is equal to the composition the balance of a wind combination is more satisfying.

Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house-the color of the slates and bricks, the shape of the windows. The notes are the bricks and the mortar of the house.

In 'thinking up' music I usually have some kind of a brass band with wings on it in back of my mind.

I've always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I'll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first.

Melody wins every time. Melody is always gonna win.

I write a lot of my music, but not all of it. I have always subscribed to the 'best song wins' theory when making an album.

The composition of a single melody is born out of a bit of text, perhaps the first line, but it can also be the entire strophe; it can even be the poem's overall form.

If you see everything through the lens, you are constantly composing pictures. I think in pictures; I don't think in text.

I like to read and dream and create music that is based on the imagery of text. If you have the combination of a great book and a great filmmaker, what could be better for the composer?

You can read a dozen different textbooks or how-to manuals that will tell you the basic rules of what makes a story - a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I've always been a composer dependent on texts.

I have written many works to accompany Old Church Slavonic texts.

Composing is to think. It is to have your mind trying to find what is the best sound that the movie is going for: the best melody, the best texture, the best structure and dramaturgic arc for the film. Then you discuss that with the director. He's the leader. He's the one showing you the path to follow to find the soul of the film.

There's an ecstasy about doing something really good on film: the composition of a shot, the drama within the shot, the texture... It's palpable.

Using open strings is a great way to add texture and atmosphere to any chord progression.

I think what really stays with me is the idea that you can write music about the texture of a wall, and everything is in some way connected.

Music is about textures as well as melody.

It was spontaneously composed as I was playing it. And then I added a couple of other overdub textures on top of it after the fact. But it's one of those things where I wouldn't be able to sit down and specifically write that. That's just what came out.

I'm a very textural composer. I care a lot about textures and gestures. Electronics add so much to that. It's like a flavor - it creates so much texture.

I am moved more by melodies, song structure, and evocative textures.

In Kid A and Amnesiac, the guitar becomes one more texture, difficult to separate from other textures.

I never did, and I never will, thank any man for altering any one word of my compositions without my privity.

My dad put me with all the greatest people. It definitely helped me now, because I know so much more about music and composition. It's cool. I love Pops. I'm super thankful for everything he's done to help my career.

The first thing is, you can't write movie music if you don't know how to write quickly.