Quotes About Composition

Perhaps because of my background as a graphic designer, I'm drawn to rich and beautiful colors.

I put one questions. For whom I compose? My answer is I wanted to address to all my people. And if I write music for the Greek people because I'm Greek, I compose for all the people.

I began like all composers, writing for small groups. Chamber groups.

A lot of the time, I will write a guitar riff first. I don't write drum riffs first.

Unless the guitar works as a color, then I don't use it, so I haven't been playing guitar too much lately.

There are no electric guitars. 'Hunchback' has arias; it's operatic.

Ever since 'Hail to the King,' we've been more cognizant of our chord progressions, our key changes, drama in songs, a lot of dynamics - we've really added a lot of that in there.

Style is a sort of melody that comes into my sentences by itself. If a writer says what he has to say as accurately and effectively as he can, his style will take care of itself.

He has got no good red blood in his body, said Sir James. No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass, and it was all semicolons and parenthesis, said Mrs. Cadwallader.

He has got no good red blood in his body, said Sir James. No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying glass, and it was all semicolons and parentheses, said Mrs. Cadwallader.

he was made from excellent human dough

He has got no good red blood in his body," said Sir James. "No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Why

But in that curious compound, the feminine character, it may easily happen that the flavor is unpleasant in spite of excellent ingredients;

I just wondered how things were put together.

'Canticum Sacrum' is wonderfully archaic. What Stravinsky does is extraordinary. It takes you on a journey from Gregorian chant right through to the modernism of Webern - and all in 17 minutes.

I really enjoy finding the right word, creating a good, flowing sentence. I enjoy the rhythm of the words.

A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

A composition is always more than the sum of its parts. In other words, a really good piece of music is more than itself. It's sort of like a prism, which you can see from each facet a single totality.

You can write a script, but that's just a starting point as a cartoonist. The heart of the process comes when you start to draw it, and you work out how to lay the page out, how best to tell the story.

We wanted to sit down and conceptually work out songs.

Yes, basically, like you said, I'll work out a chord pattern and work out the lyrics over that.

If I pick up a guitar, I don't practise scales. I never have. I come up with something I haven't done before, new approaches to chord sequences, riffs, rhythms, so it becomes composition. It's not like the music I'm doing is just a single thread.

I like writing a body of music that has a cohesive, emotional thread through it.

If it has more than three chords, it's jazz.