Bjork Quotes

Our job as composers becomes easy when directors have a good knowledge of music and know exactly what they want.

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.

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

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

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

My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.

I love making music. I love being involved in arranging music. It's very natural to know what I want to hear next and come up with ideas that are variations of what might be good.

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

I write music visually.

Usually, when we write in The B-52s, it's quite a collaborative process. We really take hours - and sometimes days - jamming, and then we listen and listen to them and go, 'Oh, let's use this part, and then this part.' It's really like a collage.

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.

I just play music by listening and responding, so I don't know anything about writing songs or arranging and all of this stuff. You know, it's in my head, but I don't know how to get it out.

As soon as I choose the timbre of an instrument, that dominates how I compose.

The creative process of composing music has always fascinated me.

I like playing guitar I don't like talking about it. I like writing riffs, I don't like explaining them.

I think I learned more about writing scores for Broadway by making mix tapes in the '90s than I did in college. You're learning about rise and fall and energy and tempo shifts. You're showing off your taste and your references. You're trying to be witty by - through placement of music you didn't write.

I play music - I write my own music, but I play music, just background music really, and just let it happen.

I'm not that fluid when it comes to scales and modes. I just pick up the guitar and play. It's all about exploration: just tune the guitar any way you want and start playing.

When I sit down to write a song, it's a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I'm about to do.

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.

Writing music is not so much inspiration as hard work.

When I composed, I heard my music played by the orchestra within days of completion of the score. No master at a conservatory, no matter how revered, can teach as much by verbal criticism as can a cold and analytical hearing of one's own music being played.

I'm not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.

Writing a simple melody can take weeks to get it right where I want it, but I do quite enjoy it.

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.