Alexandre Desplat Quotes

If you're going to start with melody you'll need some tympani, I think.

I am the pianist of the duo, although Aleksey does pretty good... you know we've written more and more stuff where he has to play the piano. But you know, to be very honest, I actually went into music because I wanted to be a composer and a conductor. And piano was just one of the ways to get into that.

When I think of Morricone, more than his using a specific instrument or a specific sound, it's his way of approaching music that sticks out.

The beauty of a main title is that you establish your main theme and maybe a bit of your secondary theme. You plant the seed that you're going to go water later in the score. And so, having that removed just made it so much more difficult.

I think a melody is a melody. And the way I usually start is I start writing my themes without even writing to picture to just try to find the tone for the movie or the TV show.

I always relish the idea of collaborating with the director on creating the sound world, the sound spectrum, and the sound environment of the film. I use every means at my disposal to create a score that is as strong and powerful to enhance the director's vision for the film.

The thing I realised about composition is, we remember most composers for four bars of music. Four singable bars of music. Pretty much any major composer from Debussy to Ravel to Mozart to whoever else - you can kind of hum it.

I don't like to surprise anyone with the music I compose for a film. That way, there is less trouble later on.

Movie music allows me to work with players as creatively as I can.

To make a film, the final big collaborator that you have is the composer.

Sometimes I write them down in musical notation as a trigger to remind me about certain directions to go. Or I can be specific about a sound I'm looking for.

I feel like I'm a secondary artist, a kind of a conduit for the writer, and if it's a good writer, then I have a great road map.

The way I see it, there's only one melody for any song.

If I get an idea for a song, I have a melody for it. I'm a musician first. I'm not limited by the fretboard.

We're looking to help our guitar buddies do their thing while at the same time we try to create something we might enjoy listening to ourselves. If anything we are trying to develop a vocabulary so we can converse more fluidly.

I still do not know where the notes will come from when I accept a commission for a new work.

I like to create the music I hear in my interior. As a conductor, you have the ability to squeeze the sounds and interpretation you asked for from 50 to 80 people.

In the film work, I love to work mainly from the script and from talking to the directors, so a lot of the music, big portions of the scores that I've made, have been composed before the movies were even shot.

When I'm making music, I can hear all the parts, all the instruments. I can hear what it should be.

I can say, with a little arrogance, that I could be an actor, a cameraman, a writer, but composers are the most mysterious people.

I have to see a definitive cut of the film before I even start thinking about the music, I tell the director what my feelings are and what I would like to do. He accepts what I say or discusses it or destroys it. Eventually, we have to find a compromise.

I'm not a script composer. I'm a film composer and my brain is excited by images and moving elements.

Our job as composers becomes easy when directors have a good knowledge of music and know exactly what they want.

I find that albums generally tell a story. Because it's music, it doesn't have to be in chronological order.

'Raaga' is one of those movies which is very special for any music director to compose music for.