Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.
Classical - perhaps I should say 'orchestral' - music is so digital, so cut up, rhythmically, pitchwise and in terms of the roles of the musicians. It's all in little boxes. The reason you get child prodigies in chess, arithmetic, and classical composition is that they are all worlds of discontinuous, parceled-up possibilities.
I grew up partially with classical music but listened to a lot of rock when I was young - I like acoustic, and folk from Mali and Armenia and Turkey.
Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music!
I thought 'Arnold Layne' was a nice name and fitted well into the music I had already composed. Then I thought, 'Arnold must have a hobby,' and it went from there.
I'm not into just one thing; I always felt like I had to have my hand in everything revolving around what I do, whether it's directing videos, making beats, making music, performing.
Music, not sex, got me aroused.
I never wrote music or arranged songs or lyrics when I was under the influence of anything but coffee. That's not gone away.
The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.
I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home.
I am about the arrangements and the layers of depth in the music.
I was a schooled musician. When I made 'Blue Velvet', I told everyone what to do. I was an arranger. I learned music in school I told the band to play this. I told the guitar to do that.
Yes, but I view Frank's music as fully composed. In other words, the arrangements can work for any idiom such as a rock band or an orchestra. Frank was a brilliant arranger and could make his music work in any context. He proved that tour after tour and album after album.
I love making music. I love being involved in arranging music. It's very natural to know what I want to hear next and come up with ideas that are variations of what might be good.
With the Rhythm Kings, I can involve myself in arranging and producing the music as well as the choice of songs.
If you do things, whether it's acting or music or painting, do it without fear - that's my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there's nothing to lose.
I do believe that my whole success goes back to that time I was arrested as a wayward boy at the age of thirteen. Because then I had to quit running around and began to learn something. Most of all, I began to learn music.
Arriving at a simple piece of music is a very difficult balance because, in being simple, you could easily be banal, so maybe it's more difficult to write a simple piece of music than a 12-tone piece where no one understands exactly what it is about.
I think of myself as an entertainment arsenal. Like I have my acting bazooka and my music machete. And you don't know what I'm going to come at you with.
I literally left school and went straight into music via art college for a year, and I've been so involved in my job of writing songs that the more actively involved part became channeled into standing on the stage and saying things that way.
