I don't think any of the early Romantic composers knew how to write for the piano... The music of that era is full of empty theatrical gestures, full of exhibitionism, and it has a worldly, hedonistic quality that simply turns me off.
But the difference between the little pieces and the big pieces - I'm not actually sure which are the little pieces. With some of the big pieces, it's a lot of musical running around, whereas the little pieces, you can say everything you want to say.
A songwriter's supreme challenge is being complex and simple at the same time
Sometimes the simplest forms of music are the hardest to play. Especially for musicians that are accomplished.
I've found in composing that being simple and profound—having in-depthness in your music—is the most difficult thing to do. Anybody can write a whole lot of notes, which may or may not say something . . . But why make it complicated for the musicians to play? Why make it difficult for the listeners to hear?
I don't use simple words. I make games and puzzles with my songs.
We're falling into a place where melody is somewhat lacking in music. Everybody feels like, okay, too much melody or too much harmony, and it kind of goes over people's heads; they don't understand it.
I love countermelodies, I love hooks and melodies that stick in your head. If I could put 20 melodies in a song and they would all work together, I would.
My music can be a little obscure. It does worry me that the music might be too complicated for people to take in - that they have to work too hard at it.
There are so many ingredients that are contained in 'The Wall' that were not necessarily contained in other Pink Floyd records, particularly following on from 'Animals,' which was very spare and sparse. Production on it was much more massive, the complexity of the recording was much more intense.
Piano playing is more difficult than statesmanship. It is harder to awake emotions in ivory keys than it is in human beings.
It is not hard to compose but it is wonderfully hard to let the superfluous notes fall under the table. . . So many melodies fly about, one must be careful not to tread on them.
Our music is harder to play than it sounds. It's the small details you don't realize are there until you try and re-do it.
Complexity can be a trap. You can have a ball developing a phrase, inverting it, playing it in different keys and times and all. But it's really more introspective than communicative. Like a crossword puzzle compared to a poem.
I think that the melodic piece of the puzzle in music is the most esoteric and difficult to quantify.
Our tunes aren't just sing-along tunes: they're very complex. After a few days of that, you gotta take a break.
Just because something is very technical or heavy doesn't mean that it's not melodic.
When you first hear Mozart's music, your first impression is that it's very alive, but if you peel away the layers, you can hear sorrow and sadness behind it, and that's what I try to be: multi-layered.
All Boston songs are fairly difficult to translate to the stage. None of them are especially easy to play or sing. A lot of them, of course, have very involved arrangements with lots of different sounds and sections that are difficult to play and sing. The prospect of doing any Boston song live is always an endeavor in itself.
I always felt each instrumental and vocal inflection had to be special... I'd spend almost as much time on those as I'd spend on the song itself.
Melodies are important. I always kind of pride myself on my melodies.
So much of the time people focus on the awesome power of Led Zeppelin, the whole 'Hammer of the Gods' thing, but John Paul Jones, probably because he was a session player, he put a lot of thought into his playing. He didn't just lumber through.
I write music that sounds complex but isn't. I frankly never think in terms of theory.
