Thomas Newman Quotes

Music has nothing to do with your technical ability.

Good taste - that's all you really need when you're playing an instrument.

Hopefully, I have a certain amount of what you call musical talent.

I just sit down at the piano and rattle it off.

I play the real instruments. I don't waste my time with anything else.

I can't play any instrument for the life of me, but I know what I want to hear.

I was always good at music.

I think it's always interesting how music means different things to different people, and people who overthink it are looking to in some ways show off with music, versus people who just respond to a song and decide to sing it.

Piano playing is a dying art. I love the fact that I can be one guy with one instrument evoking an emotional and musical experience.

I'm an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar.

The one thing I do know is that I'm the best Taylor Hawkins drummer there is, and that is all I can hope to be. And when it comes to music, musicianship and skill, there is no such thing as better or worse because so much is personal opinion, and I can see that now.

A good interpreter can take a piece of bad music and make it sound pretty decent, while a bad interpreter can take good music and make it sound cheap. I can tell that some people have a bad taste, and unlike on the piano, they smear around a lot, that is bad taste.

Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy - and it made me feel something. That's when I realized music was inside me.

I never think about rhythm versus melody; I've always just played to what's in my head.

I'm not the best singer, but I like the way I sing my songs.

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.

I cannot say what I think is right about music. I only know the rightness of it.

Well, no. I believe that it's not at all impossible that some of the performances that I've heard so far by some pianists may be superior to my own playing because those are two totally different acts altogether.

I believe I inherited my sense of music from my father. My father was an ear piano player; he could just hear something and play it.

No, improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing.

I was always pretty decent at fast stick work or doing stuff that seems impressive that's not really; I was pretty tasteful and had good ideas musically. But I had a terrible sense of tempo, which is like being a blind painter. The conductor would just rip into me, and it lasted for years.

I don't think anybody really super-consciously tries to develop a style to play.

I can't even read music. All I know is whether I think it sounds good and if I like what I'm doing.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

I can appreciate people for being able to go that fast with their left hand, man. But I just can't groove to that beat. I'm sorry. It's just like somebody sweeping the floor or something - tik tik tik tik tik. It just doesn't really jam to me.