Melvin Van Peebles Quotes

I had a big background in listening to classical music and I started trying to compose, like I was playing the guitar but I heard an orchestra in my head.

I do love using keyboards and I love writing keyboard parts, but I am not a player in the true sense of the word.

I've never known how to read music in my life.

I've never really been schooled in music theory. I'm a guitar player, and I attack the guitar in a certain way that it not fully unique to me, but it's more unique that some other people.

When I was first aware that I couldn't read music I didn't know I couldn't read because I could play the music that was in front of me.

I get like a melody that comes up and I try to write it down or record it. Hum it into a tape recorder or write it down on some manuscript paper. It could happen at any time, on the road or off the road, but mostly, you know, at home.

However, I began composing as soon as I started taking piano lessons.

I compose my own stuff. I've been writing songs with words. I've been playing more on the keyboard because I can transpose it to sheet music on the computer.

I can't read sheet music, I have to just listen to it, and then just go for it.

I compose melodies in my head and then interpret them musically with my guitar and keep them recorded. The guitar helps me to build unique chord structures on simple melodies.

I'm a self-taught musician so how I read music is kind of very weak and I kind of read my own version of tablature, I write my own crappy reminders on what I'm playing.

I tend to jot down music.

I read and write classical piano and percussion, also guitar.

I write in all keys. I've always written in all keys. I've probably written a lot of songs in A.

I learned when I started to study piano that I could play by ear. I could hear a song on the radio a couple of times and hear the song and the lyrics and sing it for you after a couple of plays.

For Ripley I learned to play some songs on the piano, and I never really played them again.

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

I had no idea what those cords were in the bridge of 'Prisoner In Disguise' when I wrote them. I had to go over to Don Gorman, the piano player, and ask what in the world I was playing.

With music, it feels natural that, in my head, I can pull things apart and then put them back together very quickly.

What I try to impart to a musician is to really try to practice the instrument in a really sincere way. Learn as much about music as you possibly can. Learn composition. Study to try to create compositions of your own and put your own personal touch on your music.

I wanted to play piano, and that slid quickly into writing - it wasn't enough to play other people's notes: I had to write notes too.

I never got formal training in music. I would just sit with my ear to the speaker and my hand on the needle. I'd listen to Wanda Jackson and think, 'How did she do that?,' and lift the needle and try it myself.

I started studying music at the age of five and a half. My older sister was taking piano lessons. When her teacher left our apartment, I would get up on the piano bench and start picking out the notes that were part of my sister's lessons.

I played piano, I learned a lot about music.

The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes.