Quotes About Composition

It's not easy to write an understated score over a loud one.

I understood the craft of photography when done by an artist is art.

I'm still undisciplined in the fact that I'm not writing anything down. I just get these lines and start piecing it together and then going back.

When I was out in Georgia doing photographs, I found myself trying to undo my own sense of composition. I'd think, 'Why do I want to take it like this? Is it because I want to take a beautiful picture?' It's quite hard to try and undo it.

Is it not the business of the conductor to convey to the public in its dramatic form the central idea of a composition; and how can he convey that idea successfully if he does not enter heart and soul into the life of the music and the tale it unfolds?

I am hoping that, with the added wisdom of old age, I can still look ahead for an improvement in tone, line, colour and composition.

We are all an instrument with a special notation to our individual identity. When you incorporate many beautiful notes together, you envelop a harmonious orchestra.

Generally, I don't pencil, especially with the autobiographical comics, although I've usually planed out composition in my head during the scripting stage. I like to work directly in ink, to keep the spontaneity and expression conveyed by a less worked over line.

To be a good improviser, you have to study composition as a parallel. Because what improvisation is, on a high level, is spontaneous composition.

Being honest and spontaneous is important when making music. But I'm also really logical when I compose.

Ah, 'Pather Panchali' was the most inspiring film that I wrote music for, and it was so spontaneously done. I saw the film, composed on the spot, along with myself and only four other musicians, and everything was done within 4-1/2 hours, I think an all-time record anywhere.

I just write stuff down and pile it up, and when I get enough stuff, I spread it out and look at it and figure out how to use it.

As an artist, as I design and lay out a page, the less-important things, things I want you to spend less time looking at, I draw them very small, maybe even silhouette them. The more-important pivotal scenes, I draw them larger, maybe even a double-page spread.

One of the primary ways that astronomers study stars is to spread their light out into a rainbow, which we call a spectrum, and from that rainbow, we can learn something about what the stars are composed of and how hot they are, how bright they are, and how they're moving, at least how they're moving toward or away from us.

Songs seem to always spring from improvisation.

I love staging action and wide-shots, not necessarily going to close-ups.

There are so many different things that lend themselves to what makes a song magical, that go beyond just the lyrics or the composition. But arrangement and production and performance have such huge stakes in what makes that sort of lightning-in-a-bottle moment.

When I got to college, I didn't take writing classes, just the standard freshman composition class.

When we try to write a pop song, we go for standard pop arrangements, even to the point where we will go to the key change at the end, which is really cheesy.

I think there's something that feels so good about a 1-4-5 chord progression. It's a very standard chord progression, and it just feels good to the ears.

I like to write film music that stands on its own.

A man posing for a painting.

Think of a full-size harp, the kind used in orchestras. Pivot it mentally from the vertical, as it normally stands, to the horizontal and put it in a box shaped to its frame. There you have the shape of the grand piano.

There is no law against composing music when one has no ideas whatsoever. The music of Wagner, therefore, is perfectly legal