Adam Mansbach Quotes

The underlying process in Northern music tends to be slower and continuous, whatever's happening on the surface; in Southern music the underlying process is always faster.

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I'd give up just about everything else for that.

I wouldn't want to hear Beethoven without beautiful bass, the cellos, the tuba. It's very important. Hip-hop has thunderous bass. And so does Beethoven. If you don't have the bass, it's like being amputated. It's like you have no legs.

The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of.

The worst words I could ever hear as a bass player was, 'Can you play the root notes?'

I can't hear rhythm.

The whole life of a song doesn't end with the way that it sounds on the record. How does this song grow? What works live? What do people like to sing along to?

Even if you've being playing together for years, there'll always be something new. You're constantly back phrasing, front phrasing, singing faster, singing slower.

I would say that 'Creed' has a lot more music in it. It's 60 minutes of music, while 'Fruitvale' had about a fourth of that at best. There's a bigger focus in 'Creed' because I had to make music for training montages.

I want to know exactly how the first few measures are going to go, and the rough shape of a movement or the whole piece and its essential character.

When we do reggae, it's normally a one-chord or a two-chord, or whatever it is. With Sting, there'll be chord changes, key changes.

I listen to everything and find parts about a song in the lyrics/melody/chords/production that I like and can be inspired by when I write my next song.

There's a song called 'Slip To The Void,' which is fairly long and has more of an epic approach. And I guess for lack of a better term some people might throw the progressive tag on it. I don't know if it necessarily falls into that - a few people have brought that up who have heard it.

'Iceman' covers a bigger scope than 'Long Day's Journey.' But they're both fabulous pieces of work. 'Iceman' is like a symphony. It's got all the movements, all these different voices. 'Long Day's Journey' is more like a beautiful string quartet.

You're creating a score that has to have an emotional and story logic to it. You want a dramatic arc. You want all the songs to push story forward. That's the same whether it's for stage or film or television or whatever.

Musical themes developing is a lot of what classical music is based on, and exposition and recapitulation - these kinds of things I find oppressive.

Deep down, classical Romantic music is what I love: Brahms, Tchaikovsky, the Romantics.

I like inventive melodies and chord changes, a little bit of creativity.

The core of all the music I love is a good bass line and a good rhythm.

There is a basic language of music that I think is important for communicating with other musicians - just the kind of terminology that might make it easier to describe your ideas to the other guys in your band.

Anything that's resolvable is boring, musically. And if it's too chaotic, you don't feel tension; it's chaos.

The music of Bach is so timeless, so fulfilling. You don't feel like you have to be in front of it. The music has everything, and you are there to find the balance when you conduct. You don't have to give too much of your individuality. It's Bach, so it's dangerous to get in the way.

I'm the greatest bass player in the world.

The piano is an instrument that can easily sound overly thick, and I love to think that I can work with textures - particularly the inner textures inside the melody or the bass line. There is an analogy there with painting; I love paintings where you see colour underneath the colour and, underneath that, more texture and shape.