Musical Concept Quotes

Normally when I do an album, I have a concept behind it.

All I want a song to do is just to kind of present an idea.

Even though the music I make gathers influences from all over the place, I feel that the core of what I do comes from the jazz tradition. In terms of improvisation, interaction, feel and overall concept, Jazz is my main source of information and inspiration.

The record [American Idiot ] felt special to us, when we recorded it, with all of the artwork and the concept behind it and it being a rock opera, but we didn't really know where it was going to go. It's like I always say, you just follow the music. Not only was American Idiot a special moment for us, but it also led to Ordinary World, too.

I worked with Kathy Rigby, and it's a concept called 'Peter Perry': it's all of Katy Perry's songs telling the story of Peter Pan. Kathy was so sweet, and it was such a cool experience to meet her and work with her and use the set that I had watched on television for so many years.

I just happened to start playing music for the conceptual ideas.

We listened to 'Beverly Hills.' I wanted to maybe even do a real 'Africa'-type version of that, I was thinking about for a minute.

All I'm really interested in musically is trying to make concept albums. Serving a larger sum than the parts.

When I first heard hip-hop I thought it was rubbish because I didn't understand the concept of people talking over music.

I don't like the term 'ensemble.' It's bland to me.

I do believe that when I'm writing music, I get addicted to the music of the concept of what the outcome of the song is, or the passion behind the lyrics.

Sometime I write a song off a central idea, instead of emotion.

What Joanna and Solange and Kanye all had in common was a mental image of what the sound is supposed to be. As a collaborator, my goal has to be to help them get toward that mental image. That was cool.

Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound.

I got it into my head that I had somewhat neglected the guitar, and then I did a record called 'Arena,' and it was not a particularly bad record - it wasn't a bad record at all, but it was built around a certain concept, which is a guitar quartet, with a little bit of augmentation here and there.

One thing that I've often done under the Projectors is build an album from a central conceit.

'State' can be a word that is a noun or a verb or an adverb - it's kind of why I chose that title. It's not to confound the audience but to keep me from painting myself into a cul-de-sac in the early stages of making a record by having too high concept or having some really strict set of rules I have to adhere to.

I'm doing a play, a musical. The musical follows the Mamma Mia concept. It's my first LA theater project.

You got to play the flute as a flute, like that. You can't play like a tenor concept on soprano; it sounds wrong. But some guys do it, and they think it's O.K., but not so!

I always say that improvisation is the utterance of one's spirit, and it dictates your life experience, and that's how you find your concepts and your way for painting your musical picture.

I never learned to verbalize an abstract musical concept. No thank you. The whole point of being a serious musician is to avoid verbalization whenever you can.

I first had the thought about making a musical of 'Edwin Drood' as far back as 1971.

I guess the disc jockey thought I was trying to sing or something so ... they had fun with it. But the reality was that it was something, there was a concept behind it.

There were a few verses that I wrote literally on the spot. But the concept was there. It's about being in your own world musically and waking up in the morning and walking outside and being consumed by everything around you. Just being aware of the good things in art and music and life. It's also about how the world is at a boiling point, in a way.

The idea of a hypnotic riff as the prime mover of a piece of music has been around for a long time, whether you're talking about the Delta blues or music from Middle Eastern and African cultures.