Quotes About Composition

I myself am made up of so many people.

Ever since I released my first album, I've tried not to use minor chords as the main element in songs. The way I sing is too melancholic.

For me, shooting, editing, and scoring rely on rhythm.

If you really want to be a good archaeologist, you have to understand ancient DNA; you have to understand chemical analysis to figure out the composition of ancient pots. You have to be able to study human remains. You need to be able to do computer processing and, in some cases, computer programming.

Popular music usually has a chorus that needs to repeat, and people need to remember the song. That's sort of the major guideline when you're writing a song.

The hardest part is writing a song as a story. A song is so short and there are only so many words that every line has to hit. The words have to flow. You can't say certain words that sound weird next to each other, you can't repeat words too much.

Usually a poem takes shape accoustically - a line or a pair of lines will repeat itself in my ear.

After years of doing composition, the risk is always that you might start to repeat and be cliche. Every time, I try find a way to be reborn again as an artist. Its not easy to reinvent yourself every time, as it takes a lot of creative energy, but I am happy to do it.

Many of my songs just come together in quatrains because that's how a hymn goes.

My two great loves when I'm shooting are working with great actors and composing images.

I'm always seeing stuff and imagining scenes in my head when I'm making music.

When I'm composing a scene for the first time, I try to imitate my character. The less critical distance the better - particularly when they're acting badly.

I wanted 'Imitations' to be a fully realized record from start to finish, with a cohesive sound and a sequence that took you from one song to the other, just like I would with a record of original stuff.

For a cinematographer, every frame has to be important.

Having a facility for language is an important part of being an author.

I knew if I wanted to improvise over chord changes, I'd have to figure out all the scales that went with all those chords.

I want to experiment and include different elements of the music-making process in a song.

There is no set time it takes to compose a song. They come easy sometimes, but more often they are stubborn, difficult things to drag out of the mind.

It's the lyrics that makes a song a hit, although the tune, of course, is what makes it last.

What is Mozart doing right now? A. He is decomposing.

Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.

If some of our works are symphonies, then wrapped walkways was chamber music.

It's always hard for me to put the pieces together when listening to a finished album that I was a part of writing and playing. There are so many memories wrapped up in each note and each song that it's hard not to constantly flash back to what made that musical event happen while listening.

Here's something I probably shouldn't be saying: I never listen to my soundtrack albums because I can't stand it. It's just stereo. When I write, I write in surround. My life is in surround.