Quotes About Composition

My religion lies in my composition.

Muita gente pensa que a arte é a grande sustentação da música, mas não é verdade. Há regras de lógica, de engenharia e de física subjacentes a todo o lado criativo da música.

Musical rests

To the editor, the author, and the public speaker, it is believed that a great convenience will hereby be afforded; for nothing adorns a composition or a speech more than appropriate quotations—endorsing, as it were, our own sentiments with the sanction of other minds—unless the habit of quoting is too often indulged, when it degenerates into pedantry, and becomes unpleasing.

Poetry is the practice of creating artworks with language. Sculptors use marble, steel, cardboard, pâté, whatever material they choose. Musicians use sound. Painters use paint. Furniture-makers use woods and fabrics. And poets use language.

My dear Pepper," said Ellery, "that is the curse of my composition. I'm always thinking. I'm pursued by what Byron in Childe Harold—you recall that magnificent first canto?—saw fit to call, 'The blight of life—the demon Thought.

I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.

Style is the mind's architecture.

Tone is light in another shape. In music, instruments perform the functions of the colors employed in painting.

A good descant makes the music richer [Katherine Patterson, "Metaphors to Live By"].

Realizing this, I knew that the actual space of a room could be broken down and played with by planting illusions of real light (electric light) at crucial junctures in the room's composition.

There was this discussion to know how long the human ear was really receptive to the music. A 74 minute CD is too long. We thought about making two CDs, 35 minutes each... But the songs need to breathe.

I don't start a song with an idea of what ingredients are going to go into a song. It's not like a recipe. I will normally either talk from personal experience or I'll make a character and then try to allow that character to behave the way he or she naturally would.

To be honest, I don't have a particular recipe, but I normally start with the chord progression and then I build it from there. I listen to a lot of jazz, so the chords are really important to me.

I've always had a bazillion songs in my archive, but I want to play people stuff they know. Now that I have two albums' worth of material, that gives me freedom to compose a set that's more well-balanced and build a show rather than just a recital of some songs.

As soon as 'Still D.R.E.' starts playing, you know what it is because of the melody. Most of the world's biggest records are less chord-driven. They have that instantly recognizable sound.

Today the arts exist in isolation, from which they can be rescued only through the conscious, cooperative effort of all craftsmen. Architects, painters, and sculptors must recognize anew and learn to grasp the composite character of a building both as an entity and in its separate parts.

I always recommend to any player to always compose their own music. It's one of the best things you can do to find a road to your own style.

When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble.

I think a lot of the Mothers stuff that we recorded was written while we were on the road.

I have one piece of music, since 1997, and I don't see it having lyrics. Where does it go in this world? So I haven't recorded it.

Writing the songs and producing the songs and arranging them and recording them is your canvas and your palette and your brush.

I have a recording that I did of instrumental songs.

Once I've got something that I feel is strong, if I get long enough to think about it, it'll turn into something. I'll start thinking about the drums - what the drums are doing, what the bass is doing. Then, if I can remember it by the time I get to a recording device, it'll turn into a song.