Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There's almost no content in terms of language at all. I don't like using language to convey meaning. I'd rather use images and music.
I just reached the point where I realised, I need to stop repeating myself if I'm ever actually going to enjoy the music I'm creating.
There's a sadness about love, a melancholy and a sadness about beauty. It's just part of the human experience of living on this planet.
You always know when a real inspiration is behind the melody, arrangements, even lyrics. And I know that's really vague, but it's true.
After so many years of whispery, DIY vocals, there's this new generation of voices that are really starting to burst through the seams.
I like to do a lot of research on all of the films I work on. So, I like to read a lot. That's always an interesting part of it with me.
My writing is consistently influenced by everything I watched and listened to growing up, so it's just this crazy collage of everything.
I've always, always, always listened to music since I was, like, 7 years old and made up stories in my head based on what I was hearing.
There's nothing worse than a director that keeps changing their mind. Because, unlike the directors I work with, I'm not decisive at all.
Music is essentially an emotional language, so you want to feel something from the relationships and build music based on those feelings.
I always thought of 'Lost' as a psychotic opera. Because there were so many characters, it was important for me to track them with themes.
A new language requires a new technique. If what you're saying doesn't require a new language, then what you're saying probably isn't new.
You'll know if you're a famous composer if 20 years from now your name appears on a pull-down menu in Band in a Box, alongside Hans Zimmer.
I think to do anything out of one's comfort zone, there has to be some aspect of it that feels inspiring and challenging in a positive way.
When I was a kid, there was no DVD, no VHS. The only way to re-live a movie once it was out of the theater was to listen to its film score.
I dropped out of high school and I tried to go to community college for a little while. I can't be a student. I always hated that lifestyle.
My biggest problem about writing is whenever I write piano pieces, because I then have to learn to play them, which is sometimes not so easy.
I like directors that give their composer a juicy role in their films. Some films have a small, minor role for music, some have a larger role.
Each culture might lend its own dialect, but above all that is the language of music itself, and it doesn't care about politics or boundaries.
I like the sounds of real, living, breathing musicians. When a real person plays something, there's a soul. They're giving you their emotions.
I think I learned everything about comedy and timing and drama from watching 'The Muppet Show,' which was one of the best shows ever produced.
There was a time that I did 'Up,' 'Star Trek' and 'Land of the Lost,' and I was working on 'Lost,' at the same time, and that was really hard.
In most multiple composer situations, you find it because someone got nervous about the music and insisted that somebody else come in and help.
I've been called a minimalist composer for more than 30 years, and while I've never really agreed with the description, I've gotten used to it.
I like the idea that [Mahatma] Gandhi is appearing now in an opera hall in all these different places, and people kind of think about it again.
The first 'Hunger Games' movie was one of those rare films to combine epic storyline, memorable characters and challenging musical opportunities.
What is full of redundancy or formula is predictably boring. What is free of all structure or discipline is randomly boring. In between lies art.
There was always a unique Beirut sound, it was always there, and so this time I just dove straight into that, instead of daydreaming and wandering.
A carefree quality is a whole aspect of life that I will never understand. I don't think I have ever been carefree and can't see the pleasure of it.
I think great filmmakers will always talk in terms of storytelling. These guys were always about the story. That is how I love to talk about a film.
I like to think that I probably have written more World War II music than anyone on the planet after all the 'Medal of Honors' and 'Call of Duties.'
I'd say the differences are more interesting than the similarities at this point. Certainly no one would ever mistake my music for Steve's [ Reich].
I'm really a very weak musicologist. Wish it weren't so, but there's only so much you can dig deeply into in one lifetime, as if you hadn't noticed.
I could probably spend the next five years reworking an album from ten years ago, if given the chance, to make it better - make it best, so to speak.
The sound world that I created for 'Avatar' had to be very different, really, than anything I ever created before. There is also three hours of music.
It's easy for me to write a quasi-virtuosic orchestral score. What is harder is to do that and say, all right, that works, but how else can you do it?
When you start on a new film, no matter how many you've done before that, I think I've done close to 80 films, but it's always kind of a fun adventure.
Nothing can grab you by the throat - or heart or soul - like an orchestra. It's undeniably the most engaging and exciting way to bring a score to life.
I got fed up with being in bands. I spent a couple of years touring the country in a smoked filled band, doing lots of drugs and being really unhealthy.
'Lost,' at its core, is a science-fiction show. Live music helps lend an air of legitimacy to this otherwise crazy storyline. It makes a big difference.
I think that sonically, music speaks volumes more than words do, and I have always thought that and will continue to think that for the rest of my life.
Disney movies have had a tradition of excellent music since the beginning. Some of my favorites are 'Fantasia,' 'Dumbo,' 'The Lion King' and 'Toy Story.'
We're all inspired by what has come before us, but hope to use the inspiration to create our own. That's the artist's journey. It's a pretty amazing path.
Obviously in Art of Noise, I'm just part of the group, and when I do film scores, it's always in collaboration with the director and other people involved.
I live in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. and spend time in the West Village, where my wife Elizabeth Cotnoir, a writer-producer and documentary filmmaker, has an office.
So much of what we do is ephemeral and quickly forgotten, even by ourselves, so it's gratifying to have something you have done linger in people's memories.
I used to do puppet shows as a kid - me and my brother would do them - and then any poor soul who came into the house had to sit and watch our puppet shows.
I know so few people who actually give music their undivided attention, so I've been trying to just park myself on the couch between the speakers and listen.
A lot of what a composer does has to do with storytelling, and there are different ways of fusing music with picture to express different storytelling ideas.
It has been argued that British girls are incapable of deep feeling or brilliant acting owing to their lack of temperament. This, I am positive, is not true.