Musical Thinking Quotes

I think musically.

There's not a lot of thinking that I need to do away from the studio on Broken Bells stuff.

My thinking musically has always been more advanced - it is difficult to get it down onto paper sometimes, even now.

Since the age of 12, all my musical thinking has been influenced by Afro-American music.

If you are trying to think ahead musically, it is not going to help you. It is better to ignore what is happening melodically and just look at the little dots coming at you and the corresponding colors and try to do it at the right time.

I lived in Scotland a long time, and I became aware of Mogwai really from the beginning. They seemed to be fusing hard music structure and sort of raw sonics. They're just very creative thinkers, musical thinkers.

When I work with different musicians, I draw a lot of things from them, and that has really expanded my musical thinking.

Music runs through everything I do - I even think musically; even when I was acting, but, especially, when I am directing. Directing is very musical.

For the last three years, I've been working on 'Bromst,' and that's all that encompassed my brain. And now that it's out, it will change the way that I think musically.

The only planning I do is about a minute before I play. I desperately try to think of something that will be effective, but I never sit down and work it out note for note.

I deal with more complex rhythmical patterns than a regular tap dancer. I even think in rhythms.

When I imagine some music in my mind, almost automatically, I imagine the piano keys.

Composing is a slowed-down improvisation; often one cannot write fast enough to keep up with the stream of ideas.

I always say that to compose is to think. Playing is good, it's useful, but it's how your intellect puts the ideas together that will bring hands to write or to play. So, it's really a combination of many things; hearing sounds, hearing layers of counterpoints, of chords.

It may well be easier to remember a list if one sings it (or dances to it). However, these uses of the 'materials' of an intelligence are essentially trivial. What is not trivial is the capacity to think musically.