Instrumental Texture Quotes

How good are the best musical imaginations? Can a trained musician, swiftly reading a score tell just how that voicing of dissonant oboes and flutes over the massed strings will sound?

When I first wrote for orchestra, I didn't realize, when you have 20 people playing a violin line, that is very different than one person playing that line.

Singing is something that I have done all my life, but what I did on my first two records was to hide the vocals. They're there to thicken the web of the cello.

The guitar shouldn't be a main instrument, it should be a texture. It shouldn't be important whether it's there or not. If it's important to you whether a guitar is there or not, you're weird.

There's quite a few people who said they couldn't play with two drummers, and I don't understand it. It's no different than playing with two guitar players, two trumpets, or two anythings.

You know, that was the first time [with Any Winehouse] that I probably ever used a baritone sax. And it's certainly the texture that, you know - it's all over the record 'cause it's a nice compliment to her tone.

I wrote all my songs on my main instruments, and the songs I would record in my bedroom were just acoustic guitar, mandolin, and sometimes bass. I really like the texture the mandolin added to my music, but my fingers were too big to play it... I could only do little riffs and whatever.

My head is full of shifting patterns and polyrhythmic stuff; but I want to use all acoustic instruments and create this kind of tapestry of interlocking lulling parts.