Jonny Greenwood Quotes

In my mind, my music feels so big, a true production.

My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter.

If you're going to start with melody you'll need some tympani, I think.

I wasn't interested in writing music that wasn't beautiful for me to listen to.

I aim my arrangements at what will fit and colorfully frame the song in the best way possible.

A strong concept is the most important thing in creating a record. When you can listen to it and see a whole movie in your head, that's what separates an instrumental album from a beat tape.

Producing isn't just making beats on a beat machine. It's bringing together these string players with this flute player and this singer, and telling them to all work in the key of C major... You bring these people together and let them all cook.

The really pop country stuff can sound a little bland because they put in strings and horns and all of that.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

I am about the arrangements and the layers of depth in the music.

The idea to do the album only on keyboards kind of happened by accident. I was quite happy with the sound and felt it really didn't need more instruments, so I didn't use them.

When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble.

When I'm making music, I can hear all the parts, all the instruments. I can hear what it should be.

I've always wanted to have keyboards in the band.

I need a big picture. I can't just do a collection of songs; that doesn't work for me.

It's writing songs within the structure of telling a story, so it becomes a platform for diverse songwriting, for a writing process that's broader than just figuring out a song. You're also dealing with always pushing the story forward, with casting the voices, with the orchestration, with the arrangements.

I think, for me, a way to really come up with new ideas and come up with new ways of writing music is to create a unique sound palette or soundscape for all the films I'm working on.

I had a really pleasant time composing music for 'Raaga.'

If you see a credit with just my name on it, that means I write absolutely everything: rhythm guitar parts, guitar melodies, vocal melodies... absolutely everything, really.

Isn't composing music akin to film direction?

My films are musically inclined.

I felt like I was building this world brick by brick with each layer of instrumentation I was doing. I could see it growing in some ways. I feel like most writers feel the same way. You're almost living inside of this magic world that you're building.

I personally like melodies. And Mani Sharma garu is the Melody Brahma.

Most of the time, I write songs with the arrangements all at once, in my head. There's the producer side of me that's always thinking sounds, like, 'Wouldn't this be a great sound if it existed to put in front of a song, to open it up, and then, when it did its thing, something else would happen?

I've never been very good at creating absolute music, which has no non-musical dimension to it. I think that is why filmmakers gravitated toward my work.