Out of doing all that experimentation with sound I decided I wanted to do it with live musicians. To take repetition, take music fragments and make it live. Musicians would be able to play it and create this kind of abstract fabric of sound.
Jerry Bruckheimer is the most hands-on producer that I've worked with. Jerry's very involved in the music, and he's such a fan of film. When you watch him playing back the cues to the picture, he's like a kid in a candy store.
I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it's a better way of telling the stories.
I think the first thing you should know is that nobody in country music 'made it' the same way. It's all different. There's no blueprint for success, and sometimes you just have to work at it.
You get to a point where it's like you can't really do anything right, and people will pick on you for whatever decisions you make, so I just try and take no notice and get on with my music.
I worked as a production assistant on a couple of films, and finally, I got a job at an animation studio as an editor. After that, work begat work. I got into directing music videos and commercials.
I was never attracted to the pop world. I listen to music that is pop sometimes. But I've never thought, 'Oh, I need to work with Ne-Yo now.' It's never really been my thing.
I do think it's probably true to a certain extent that you tend to sing music that fits your voice. If you're Lou Reed, you're unlikely to become a country singer.
I have a sort of tactility about music. I go into record stores and just run my fingers over it, the spines.
Everyone is taught the essentials of writing for at least 13 years, maybe more if they go to college. Nobody is taught music or tap dancing that way.
This quality, I mean Geoffrey was with me, was very easy doing - he loved me very much, I loved him very much, and we understood each other so well that it was a pleasure to make music.
With Geoffrey, it was the first time we did music together, we understood that everything could be well, and without any problem. And we didn't need to rehearse too much.
Every writer writes in different ways, and so some write the music first, while others write the lyrics first, and some write while they are doing other things, and it is just nice to see how other writers are writing.
I rarely listen to music while writing. If I don't like it, it bothers me, and if I like it, it absorbs me so much I can't write.
Music for me is an emotional thing and it really does make me happy. It's not a tool for me to get fame or see my face in the papers or anything like that. It's about the fact that I really do enjoy it.
I've never really been schooled in music theory. I'm a guitar player, and I attack the guitar in a certain way that it not fully unique to me, but it's more unique that some other people.
Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish.
Now the big question is if you are going to go to all the trouble of setting an opera and making all that music and so on, there's got to be some aspect that you can do in an opera that really makes it worth while.
I like to think that my works flow like music. That may be one reason I work in large groups versus one picture of one thing; it's the flow of the whole series that counts.
So when you enjoy the beats, the rock music - maybe even toned down with an orchestra - you are enjoying the spirit of the black race. And that's what I emphasize to the students.
I know that the nice shines I have on is going to pass. The nice cars will pass. All that will stay is the music and the work. That's where I get the inspiration to help people out and work.
