Rostam Batmanglij Quotes

Music should come from the heart. It should happen. That should be automatic, and if you labour on creating music, it will not have soul.

People still call me the eternal amateur. After all, professionals are supposed to be able to conduct everything. But I can't unless I feel some connection inside. Conducting is not an end in itself for me.

I have tried, in all the ways I can, to make timeless music.

If you're an artist, you want to draw from real life; you want to draw from experiences, emotion, and it's something that a lot of musicians juggle with. I've always found it so fascinating.

The drive to create music that is pure is my highest priority. Sometimes I'll get extremely technical, and other times I'll just kind of go with the gods of music.

One ends up relying on pure musical inspiration, and failing that, the music won't lead to anything good, or it will alienate all but the most die-hard fans.

I create music for myself first of all because if I'm not happy with the music I create, I can't make anybody else happy.

I want to show people my interpretation of what creating music is, and this is where it comes from: the heart.

Success is being artistically fulfilled and happy. You can't control how people see your movie or how much money it makes...and the same thing with music. When I'm writing a song or I'm in the studio, those memories, that's epic.

The reality for me is simple. When music is written, it is usually categorized as classical. When it is improvised, it can still be called classical if it is an inspired improvisation. In either category, it is still music, and it can be good or bad or simply mediocre.

The only reason I create something is because I'm chasing a feeling. You can use a bunch of musical or psychological operations to achieve that result.

We make music that we believe in. That's all it is.

I think that when I am making music, if I can be really happy with it and get my message across, then that is the most important thing.

I don't think that my music without pain is good music - and I wouldn't know, because I haven't made any music without pain.

The most difficult thing for me as an artist, as a creator of music, is lyrics. But everything else, I just do it.

The creative process of composing music has always fascinated me.

There are times, like with Dire Straits, where you can get as close as you can be to being good at your instrument and not cross over to that tasteless place.

I started writing music around 20 years old.

I started writing probably around when I was 15, because that's when I picked up the guitar. That was also around the same time when I began to create my own music, and everything really just clicked for me, and I knew this was what I was going to do.

Songs seem to always spring from improvisation.

At the end of the day, I just like to make the best music that I can make and put it out to the world and see how they respond to it.

Keith Richards has some sort of quote that says 'it takes two people to write a song,' and I'm of that school of thought, too.

I always find that, when it comes to writing songs, if the melody and the chords are working, we're 90 per cent there.

I just wanted to release an album of piano music for music's sake. I'm not expecting to sell millions of albums. It's was just nice to be able to sit down at an acoustic piano and make some music.

I could care less about the particular. I like to make music.