Les Baxter Quotes

The creative process of composing music has always fascinated me.

That is basically me, and although I have done many things in my life - conducting, playing piano, and so on - what is fundamental is my being a composer.

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

Whether it's string writing or whatever, I try to write for what each instrumentalist can do best.

My thinking musically has always been more advanced - it is difficult to get it down onto paper sometimes, even now.

Many, many composers have only found their way to a certain form, through familiarizing themselves with texts.

Originally, I wanted to be a composer. I always tell people, 'I think of myself as a composer.'

I usually think in terms of music.

I can't play an instrument to save my life. But when I'm creating, and when I'm making music, I feel like I'm the head of the orchestra, and I'm just waving my wand, and something is created.

If you can say something special on the guitar, then you're going to perk my ears up. But if you're just gonna run through all the scales, then I can always find something else to listen to.

I wish I could play music. I think I get as closeas possible with the editing of the films. Over the years musichas been an even more important influence than-or as important as-film.There's no doubt about it. Painting, movement, dance, sculpture-it'sall in cinema.

All these tales of people sitting down and composing symphonies just as though they were writing a letter are very much exaggerated; at least, it isn't that way in my work.

I'm an interpreter of music.

Jeff Lynne is an arranger, and I think it's probably much easier for him to go ahead and play a part himself than to try to show somebody else what he wants. But it's hard for me to say; I barely know Jeff.

That's what it is that you rehearse - the making of music, not the playing of notes as abstractions.

I feel pretty comfortable in a lot of different musical styles. I like rhythm, and I like melody and so forth.

There's many, many ways to write a song. But generally, sitting down at a table and writing is not one of them.

I'm kind of the town pump. I think I have a pretty good ear for what sounds good in this style.

Experimenting with different sounds is great, but when it comes down to it, you're still playing a guitar.

The bass is just the crayon that I picked out of the box. I'd probably be writing similar stuff if I played guitar or trumpet. The pictures I want to draw I do with this crayon I chose, which is the bass.

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

And after I compose my programs, but it is very easy because I look to the music in a very natural way without fuss, and so I look always music, in my home, like books and books and books, choose books and you read the pages, so I do this with music, and I make programs.

My music is simple stuff. Anybody can sit down, look at a set of symbols and produce sounds the music represents.

Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.

Composition is definitely what I'm born to do, and it came last.