Beth Orton Quotes

I love putting the music together. It's like art.

Usually one or two things happen: Either you have an idea straightaway - the sort of sound that you want or the instrumentation or one particular sound that you want to feature - or you don't.

I am an inventor of music.

I would be content if I had nothing but a tape-recorder. I could still write songs and record them.

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.

I think, for me, a way to really come up with new ideas and come up with new ways of writing music is to create a unique sound palette or soundscape for all the films I'm working on.

Musically, I always wanted to experiment.

I think that the process of making music is a hard one to describe as well.

I love building a song up from nothing and jumping from one instrument to another.

I love, love, love just being hands on at all times in the studio.

When you produce an album, you're dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it.

But my role is to just apply the skills I've learned over the years: you listen to the guitar, you listen to the vocal melodies, you listen to the rhythm, and you come up with something that helps you take the song somewhere.

I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't.

Rap is something you can just throw on the skillet and fry up real quick. That's how it comes to me, my train of thought. It's like getting dressed - I don't have to sit down and stare at clothes, I just pick what I like and put it on. But rock, you gotta put it in the oven and let it bake.

It's about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness - sonic goodies.

I find it hard to get excited by just a sound. I have to have a song there, then I'll find what used I can make of that sound within the song.

There's two facets to writing a song. There's you sitting in your room writing the sentiments of the song; the lyrics, the melody and the changes, and then there's the part where you go into the studio and you put clothing on it.

I started trying to do my own music at home, and I was like, 'You know what, I can play the guitar, sort of. And I can do these things, sort of. And I can make these crazy noises on my computer, sort of. But I need a ridiculously good drummer. I need someone to help me with string arrangements.'

One of the most frustrating parts about songwriting for me is production, but it makes me want to get better at it and ends up being one of the most rewarding parts of it.

The best musicians or sound-artists are people who never considered themselves to be artists or musicians.

I've got to be honest: I don't listen to any music now. I don't even listen to mine! I like to walk fresh into the studio and have ideas that come straight out of me.

When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble.

If you just want ten songs to fit somebody else's script, then I'm not really the composer for that.

I love making soundtracks for video games, because it is a completely different challenge, and I get to do something different.

In order to write music, you need lots of Tabasco sauce.