Since his childhood, Bappa has observed me singing and practicing and is well aware of all sorts of recording and singing arrangements. I have a studio at my home, so whenever he needs my help I make sure I stand by him. I often sing for the tunes that he composes.
Too many notes
The creative process for a musician is very different than for a filmmaker. I have an idea, and I can pretty much execute it.
The thing I find frustrating about rock music is, how different can you make an acoustic drum kit sound, an electric guitar and vocals?
My brother is an excellent songwriter, and I play guitar and drums.
I can imagine myself as an old man writing music for choir or orchestra. I don't know that I'll be touring six months out of the year in a rock band when I'm 60.
Breaking Benjamin, talk about songwriting, I mean, some of the greatest songwriters of the modern era. And, obviously, it's a little heavier.
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.
Songs come to me and I hear them. At least in part, they are very complete; I hear the whole chorus, including the drum pattern, the base, the countermelody, the basic harmonic structure and the main thrust of the lyric.
We had a bunch of instruments around the house. Like, I played different instruments, trumpet, bass, drums, piano, all that, but whatever I could get my hands on.
It's highly collaborative, musical theater, so everybody has got to somehow get along.
There's nothing prettier in the world than a melody. I can get lost in a song with a melody.
I have a lot of songs, and I'd love to do some more recording with the band.
It takes so much energy and time to make one song perfect.
My only real hobby is playing music. I write a lot of music on guitar and keyboards and hope one day to make a record or maybe even write the score for a film.
To me, the lyrics of the song define the kind of style it is.
The first songs I ever wrote - my first, like, serious offerings - were all written on ukulele. It's always been a part of the way I write for a really long time.
I play keyboards and sing. I've written a couple of songs too.
I'm a composer like every maestro on this earth.
Luckily, I'm in a band with two other guys who really pull their own weight and have the skills and abilities to compensate for my weaknesses.
When I write a song and come up with an arrangement and a vocal part, it's always a challenge trying to find a singer who can interpret it sort of the way that I hear it, and it's a very difficult thing to do. I mean, singing is like playing an instrument - everybody does it a little bit different - singing maybe even more so.
I know Pentatonix. I knew them before they were even a group.
I have a visual sense for the music. It has to stay true to a certain sense of period. I rely on a sense of colors and mood in my approach to the arrangement.
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 play guitar all the time, and I'm constantly thinking of songs... Every time I pick up a guitar, I come up with different riffs, all different bands I've been in. Sometimes there is a song or riff that could only belong with Slipknot, and I just can't use it for anything else, regardless of whatever happened.
