Rhythmic Variation Quotes

Polyphonic prose is a kind of free verse, except that it is still freer. Polyphonic makes full use of cadence, rime, alliteration, assonance.

The patterns of big-band music are smooth and classical. It's got to be fresh. The brass section should crackle, like the sound of eggs being dropped into hot grease.

The process of repeating a rhythm while it gently evolves has an incredible effect on the brain, or on mine anyway.

There is no pop category, let alone any infinitely gene-sliced genre name, to contain the lead in Rihanna's voice in 'Needed Me.'

In fact, jazz has such a great feeling and great emotional content that it really doesn't require you to have technical understanding of it. I think you just have to allow your feelings to go with the music and you will find yourself carried along by it fairly quickly.

Back in the day, rappers were 'bump bump bump ba bump ba bump.' They was rhyming like that, but I was like, 'bababa bump bump babum ba babump bababa bump.'

There's a lot of personality in Lars's drumming. That's what makes it unique.

If you had to call it "unison", it ain't unison. It ain't the same as somebody else. If you can hear that it's unison, and you have to name it something other than "unison", it ain't unison, you know what I mean? It's two guys playin', but one guy is playin' slightly out of tune, one is playin' slightly off meter.

Although I am basically self taught, I consider Debussy my teacher - the most important elements are colour, light and shadow.

There's so many ways you can play one chord progression that the repetition isn't ever exactly the same.

Jazz can be a blank canvas full of possibilities.

Jazz can accommodate so many things. Jazz is like the universe: it's been expanding since its creation, and it's connected to everything.

I like mixing things up. That makes it more interesting. I love mixing in slower funk with what I do. I'll add drum and bass and put my foot to the gas pedal and press it to the floor.

Sometimes I will slow down the beat for one bar on purpose, just to see if the rapper can adapt his flow and stay on beat.

There are rules that are so blatantly broken on 'Contra,' like structures of harmony and texture.

Disco is funky when you take one record at a time. It's just that they narrowed it down to one beat to try to corner the market on a particular music. And when you do that with rhythm - talk about something that will get on your nerves. Try to make love with one stroke. Somebody will tell you to fax it in.

Music has to be written while people are still excited about a particular melodic or rhythmic sequence. The idea doesn't come out the same if we're not really excited about it.

Jazz and poetry both involve a structure that may be familiar and to some extent predictable. And then, you try to create as much surprise and spontaneity and feeling and variation while respecting that structure.

The great musics of the world are great for very similar structural reasons: good melody, good harmony, and a balance of feminine and masculine energy.

No one wants to hear me over some smooth, regular beat, or just into the times. I try to do records sometimes that have a different bounce - maybe it's a Southern bounce or something. And people shoot me all day long.

The underlying process in Northern music tends to be slower and continuous, whatever's happening on the surface; in Southern music the underlying process is always faster.

You have to have that organizational principle behind the song.

Counterpoint is a component that gives real energy, and it is about optimism.

I like structuring verses, choruses, but sometimes the verses might be a tango and the choruses might be death metal.

The hardest part about writing any song is, what do you write? And how do I rewrite things? You start to run out of ideas that feel fresh.