Melodic Patterns Quotes

There is a lot of melody and things that sound familiar in hundreds of songs.

No, there's something about the sing-song cadence of children's music that has its place in rock.

I like creating these rhythmic patterns. These interlocking rhythmic things are really fun.

Finger-picking, in general, is a hypnotic thing. I feel like I'm more A.D.D. all the time, so the music has to be hypnotic.

I'm into scales right now.

People listen to music with cavemen ears: Is it a bird song or the call of a lion? The audience at a musical is dancing in their hearts.

As a songwriter, pop music really is a love and a joy and a science, and I feel like a lot of people look at pop music with a very formulaic perspective in numbers and patterns, but an outsider would think that the process is very natural.

The concept is basically; that the pieces we know and love are made up of scales, arpeggios, and the like.

Folk melodies are the embodiment of an artistic perfection of the highest order; in fact, they are models of the way in which a musical idea can be expressed with utmost perfection in terms of brevity of form and simplicity of means.

I love to simplify the ragas and use them in my music as much as possible.

I practice all the scales. Everyone should know lots of scales. Actually, I feel there are only scales. What is a chord, if not the notes of a scale hooked together?

Music is essentially built upon primitive memory structures.

Gamelan instruments are exotic and mysterious.

There are rhythmic ideas which sometimes only work up to a point. In writing there are moments when it just comes off the page, it's not just a collection of notes.

Classical music can be catchy, so can African instrumental guitar music. It's not just pop songs that are catchy. Rhythms can be catchy, too.

The inner core of my being is Carnatic music.

I find above all that the expression, atonal music, is most unfortunate — it is on a par with calling flying the art of not falling, or swimming the art of not drowning.

There are thousands of ragas, and they are all connected with different times of the day, like sunrise or night or sunset. It is all based on 72 of what we call 'mela' or scales. And we have principally nine moods, ranging from peacefulness to praying, or the feeling of emptiness you get by sitting by the ocean.

I knew if I wanted to improvise over chord changes, I'd have to figure out all the scales that went with all those chords.

I would literally never think about melody. I never thought people listened to melody because I listen to words.

A thousand trills and quivering sounds In airy circles o'er us fly, Till, wafted by a gentle breeze, They faint and languish by degrees, And at a distance die.