Danny Elfman Quotes

My songs have a lot going on in them -they're packed with sounds. When I have only three or four minutes to capture something, I guess I can't stand the idea of any bar going unloved.

I enjoy singing the songs a certain way, but I don't even know how the writing even began. To me, it's work that is kind of invisible; it's a weird kind of work to have because you're not working, but it's not not work. Formulating your thoughts and making a melody that's catchy enough for people to listen to what you're saying is really hard!

When you sit there doing a film score for three months there's no time to experiment.

When I write a tune - and it's been like this for many years - I always hear in the back of my head some sort of vague, orchestrated, fully fleshed-out big-band version of the song with other parts going on.

I really believe in melody.

There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.

The process of composing the film score for each movie is completely different. They all have their own personality and their own completely different life, but there's never been a formula. Each time, it's a new thing.

The bass line is the anchor for me. I started with the bass, and either doubled that and then added the harmonies, or sometimes added my own harmonies that I've always wanted to sing on the song. And then it just went on from there - singing violin parts and trumpet parts and just trying to emulate the sounds of the instruments.

I'm writing new songs for a Broadway version of Tarzan, which is very interesting. I think what I learned from the Brother Bear score side of things, I've brought into the new Tarzan songs. Thinking outside just guitar, bass, drums and keyboards.

Writing beautiful melodies is not fashionable because it is very difficult to do.

Or certainly I would need time - which I would love to have but there almost never is on a film - to just spend a week with a roomful of guys laying down these patterns.

I currently spend a lot of time thinking about orchestration and every detail of a piece.

It's never easy to write a song. It's the most difficult thing I do.

I had three weeks of prep on 'Wolfman,' a ridiculously inadequate amount of time to try to bring together the fractured and scattered pieces of the production. I had taken the job mostly because I had a cash flow problem, the only time in my career I've ever let finances enter into the decision process.

I just go into the studio, look at the lyrics for the first time when I put them on the piano, and go. If I haven't got it within 40 minutes, I give up. It's never changed, the thrill has never gone, because I don't know what I'm going to get next.

I always think it's important to choose your initial theme very carefully because you're going to be married to it for a long time. You might have to generate an hour's worth of music from a very short, little piece of theme.

I always begin to compose the melody first.

I grew up at the piano, and I longed to write musicals.

My vocation is more in composition really than anything else - building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army.

All of our songs take these really big creative turns and twists throughout the process, so sometimes songs will start out as a melody or some musical chord progressions.

When I think of Morricone, more than his using a specific instrument or a specific sound, it's his way of approaching music that sticks out.

It's really important to me that the songs not only stand out individually but work as a full body of work, too.

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.

Why write for the orchestra? For one thing it's a very challenging problem.

The first thing I do is lay out that melody and figure out how it has to hold here and then finish to land here, because you know in advance you're going to want the melody to catch four things in the action.