Too many notes
I don't regard myself as a soloist. It's a color; I put it in for excitement. It's not great loss if a solo has to go. We've made songs without solos.
I started studying counterpoint and theory with a physicist whose hobby was music.
I start out with words, with the idea, the line. Then after I get a line or two, I try to find what melodic line those lines would be suited to. As soon as I find the form I can finish the song in my head.
I think often times if a guitar riff is centered around the chorus or if it follows the chorus, then it often times turns into the actual hook.
I like harmonizing with other people, but a lot of times, I do harmonize with myself.
The virtuoso element in jazz playing, all those very fast runs in the upper extremes, simply doesn't appeal to me. That's why I don't want to make my concerto "virtuosic" in the sense of a technical show-off. I want a beautiful sound and a melodic and lyrical line. I am more interested in the way someone can play musically.
When I'm singing, I connect the dots with notes.
A superb tenor voice, like a silver trumpet muffled in silk.
I most enjoy sitting down with the acoustic guitar and just fiddling around and trying to come up with something like a hook or some sort of melodic line. That's something that I do habitually.
I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes (harmonies) that were being used all the time. I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.
When I was a student, if you accidentally wrote a triad in a piece of yours, it was just sort of like you were breaking the law! You just couldn't do it. And that just meant you were a bad composer.
If some of our works are symphonies, then wrapped walkways was chamber music.
I want the score to have a really big voice.
Those who were still able to write beautiful melodies were kitsch composers like Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky approaches true art not in his numerous beautiful melodies, but when a melodic line is thwarted.
I listen to the timbre of the music, and I fit my voice to blend with that timbre.
And there's always one special element. In 'There Goes My Baby,' it's the out-of-tune timpani. 'Stand by Me,' it's the bass pattern. Of course, all the elements come together to make a great record. But there's always one standout.
I'm the kind of person who can hear that stuff. If you sing along to the radio and you're not going to sing unison with the melody, but find the harmony, I find that pretty easy to do.
I really love singing. I love singing harmony, mostly.
The baritone can serve functions that the alto and tenor cannot, in orchestral voicing.
Opera is one of the most important art forms. It should be listened to and appreciated by everyone.
I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That's when I was born.
When I was in grade school, I remember singing in a chorus where they actually had two parts going. It was very easy for me to pick out the harmonies, and I kind of just went with it.
A female vocal can lift a song.
Opera is the original marriage of words and music, and there's a theatre element, a dramatic element. It's right up my alley.
