If there is a possibility within a film to have a song in the music score that adds a little bit of zing to the music album, then why not utilise it?
I've grown in tremendous ways with enhancing my music, my ability to perform on stage and travel all around to spread bounce music. I've come so far from being that little black boy growing up in New Orleans to now.
You can make yourself the greatest singer in the world or the best drummer in the world with the aid of technology.
A female vocal can lift a song.
For instance, if you're playing a record with drums - horns would sound nice to enhance it so you get a record with horns and slip it in at certain times.
Music has done a lot to enhance the emotions of sports. It's played in arenas. Whenever there is footage cut together they're always using music. And it goes together, you know.
In a studio context, the music becomes greater than the sum of its parts. When you have collaboration, you have other people's strengths that I don't share, so my song can get stronger.
I don't want to work with directors who use music only to accentuate sound effects. I want to work with people who give music the value it deserves.
I brought in producer Johan Carlsson [Ariana Grande, One Direction, Flo Rida] and asked, "Can you make this better?" And he did.
The bass, no matter what kind of music you're playing, it just enhances the sound and makes everything sound more beautiful and full. When the bass stops, the bottom kind of drops out of everything.
Miles Davis and Felonious Monk, they're both great artists who enhance things.
Horns really make a good band. They always create excitement when it's needed. They give the music a broader spread. It doesn't have to be all guitars and keyboards all the time.
Some producers hang-on to that old cliche that if the audience hears the music, it is no good. I say this is so much talk. Music gives the film another dimension, if it's done with the story in mind.
The difference between me and other people in my generation is instead of saying the Internet's killing the record business, I say, 'Who cares about the record business, the Internet is enhancing music.'
Normally when I work with bands I'm trying to refine and improve what's already there.
That's what keeps me going: those moments of solving a problem, of what happens to a movie when the right music is added - and what happens to the music when the movie's working with it.
In nearly all ballads, the words set the mood and meaning, while the music intensifies or enhances them.
My harmony is passable but is usually made more eloquent at the hands of Steve Hamilton.
And I've also come to the conclusion that, as far as guitar solos and things like that are concerned, it's more important to complement the music rather than take away from it.
