Isaac Asimov Quotes

I studied harmony and composition in a very spontaneous manner.

It took me a long time to learn how to write a good song.

Certain things you learn through exposure. It's really the elements which make up any artist. You really learn by example. You learn by influence. And some people have a huge impact on you, and that's how you become the artist you are.

All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

Then I came in twice a week - for my own enjoyment as well as to be a guide. And then we started to apply some of the splinters of the ideas back into the piece.

I think it's a great document of John Stevens' originality. At that time he was already much more fully formed in his conception than I was. I was sort of struggling to keep up, and sometimes it's pretty obvious.

It's very demanding to make up your own music.

With guitar riffs, we always look for something that 's a little bit special. We've always found that it is harder to come up with something that's nice and simple without getting something that's hard but easy.

No I.D. is like an alchemist and he'll only give you so much at one time. It's for the best at the end of the day, cause through the process of working with No I.D. I was able to soak up his perspective for songwriting and production and keeping music alive.

For the first three years, when I was writing, I was doing sessions with a whole bunch of different people all the time every day until I met Lindy Robbins, who kind of mentored me. And then, once you find that, all the pieces come together.

I can put some chords together and maybe write a song, but I'm learning every day. And that's the fun part.

A young man, just beginning the study of musical composition, once went to Mozart and asked him the formula for developing the theme of a symphony. Mozart suggested that a symphony was rather an ambitious project for a beginner: perhaps the young man might better try his hand at something simpler first. "But you were writing symphonies when you were my age." the student protested. "Yes, but I didn't have to ask how."

It is well for young men to have a model, but let them draw the curtain over it while they are painting.

I was writing tons of music in my spare time. I might be on location somewhere, and I'd go home and I'd have my guitar and my little keyboard or something and write music. Or if I was at home, on my piano. I've always been a late bloomer with a lot of things, just in general, so I think this was something that needed to come to fruition in this particular way.

I thought that if I practiced doing melodies for a year or so at home, I would learn to think melodically, and when I went to work it would come out, and it did, on this album. What else was important to me...? I spend a lot of time in the grocery store, shopping.

One of the grave dangers inherent in the various stages of any theatrical career-whether it be budding, quiescent or diminishing-is the advice of friends.

With the artists, I don't teach, I coach. I can't tell them how to make art. I tell them to make more art. I tell them to get up early and stay up late. I tell them not to quit. I tell them if somebody else is already making their work. My job is to be current with the discourse and not be an asshole. That's all I wanted in a professor.

I don't listen to music for fun. I ain't got enough time for fun! I'm always busy writing my own music. I don't try to compete or see what other people are doing.

All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?

I actually believe that a lot of what people call originality has to do with persistence in the craft.

Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.

Composition is a process of combination, in which thought puts together complementary truths, and talent fuses into harmony the most contrary qualities of style. So that there is no composition without effort, without pain even, as in all bringing forth. The reward is the giving birth to something living--something, that is to say, which, by a kind of magic, makes a living unity out of such opposed attributes as orderliness and spontaneity, thought and imagination, solidity and charm.

You have to take a lot of bad pictures. Dont' be afraid to take bad pictures... You have to take a lot of bad pictures in order to know when you've got a good one.

You learn, of course, when you're working with something good, but you also can learn when you're working with things that are not good. You can see the reasons they're not good. I would sometimes suggest what could be done, but essentially say "It isn't worth the bother." So I learned from that process.