Igor Stravinsky Quotes

There are only so many notes so there must be only so many melodies.

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

There are only twelve tones and they need to be treated carefully.

I'm not a total chump. I write stuff that's reasonably musically complex.

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

Music assists him in the use of harmonic and mathematical proportion.

The real architecture happens within the works themselves, and that was done by the composer. That's where the real skill is. In putting together a program, you're more a curator, but that's important as well. And then the interpreting of it is where our big job is.

A lot of music is mathematics. It's balance.

I am so happy that I didn't go to school and I didn't have anyone to tell me how to position my fingers on the piano correctly. And what you do with music and what is the correct way to write it and what is not the correct way to write it.

If I get an idea for a song, I have a melody for it. I'm a musician first. I'm not limited by the fretboard.

I could stop and say, Well that was a D minor, G seven, but I really don't want to know that. I just want to know that there's a combination of notes that makes a sound.

I think musically.

There's a basic rule which runs through all kinds of music, kind of an unwritten rule. I don't know what it is. But I've got it.

Music is an intrinsic part of life; therefore, it is important to transport different forms of artistic expression, science, and mathematics into compositions.

I like inventive melodies and chord changes, a little bit of creativity.

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.

The creative process of composing music has always fascinated me.

Being honest and spontaneous is important when making music. But I'm also really logical when I compose.

Writing music is very, very clinical. You just sit down at a piano, map out a theme and when all the technicalities come together, out pours the music.

Music has a lot in com­mon with math­e­mat­ics. But in music, two and two need not make four: they add up to what­ever you wish.

Each song is a small universe to me. Each song has a story of its own. Each has a full life to express in order to be complete, so it often happens that the building to a big crescendo feels right in the recording or writing process.

My musical knowledge is so bad it's embarrassing. When composers discuss music with someone as primitive as myself, they have to talk about it in terms of senses and emotion, rather than keys and tempo.

I started playing guitar before I can really remember, and I started writing really early, too.

I played trumpet in the school bands. I learned things I liked to play on my trumpet, but I didn't learn why this note goes with this note and why it produces that sound. Or how to create tension in the composition.

I can take any series of numbers and turn it into music, from Bach to bebop, Herbie Hancock to hip-hop.