Mike D Quotes

I'd love to collaborate with a writer, but I'm such a control freak, it might be difficult.

Basically I started to jot notes, lots of faxes back and forth to my writer, we faxed ideas throughout the whole first draft, and started all over again.

The break down for kids is communication. Music helps bring that bond.

There is no roles. No one is keeping any roles. The drummer is also answering everybody and everything. So it is a constant conversation and communication between musicians on an extremely high level with extremely valuable material, motifs, and melodies.

You know, I think music is very interactive. It's a - it's a language.

Sure, I love people, and I want to communicate with people. I mean, what is music anyway? It's a form of communication - at least for me it is. And that's why I play the kind of music that I think - that I hope - can communicate with people.

Yeah, improvising only really works 100% when you're with somebody.

What I try to get beyond is playing music at people and, instead, to play music with people because audience members are constantly part of the experience. What they say in their body language, what they say in their eyes, what they sing with me... it's an 'us,' and there's a communication that's like... it's like church, man.

Music is a language.

Music is like a conversation. One person says one thing that speaks with a harmonica, with a bass, with a drum. They're all conversating, and we're just trying to find a way to make conversation rather than blah, blah, blah. But it's not really so hard a thing to do if you know the way to approach it.

I find it somewhat difficult to write with other people, although it has happened occasionally.

A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other's ideas.

When I'm writing a song for another artist, I purposefully make it not for me; otherwise, I get too attached.

Music is about communication, and the chemistry between an audience and the orchestra is absolutely essential; the performance does not exist in a bubble.

But I always communicate with the audience. I never pretend like I'm just in my bedroom making a track. The whole point of doing a gig is, like, a feedback thing between you and the audience.

Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.

I use music as a medium to talk to people.

Corporate documents, like football game plans, are not easily drafted in a stadium, with thousands of very interested fans participating, each with their own red pencil, trying to reach a consensus on every word.

Billboard called my solo album, 'Standing In The Spotlight,' a great party album and even said that my raps put the Beastie Boys to shame.

What is music anyway? It's a form of communication, and that's why I play the kind of music that I think - that I hope - can communicate with people.

Most musicians count at the beginning, and never count and talk to their musicians after that. They only talk to them at the end of the song. But I would count with them and talk.

It still amazes me how many musicians aren't really interested in engaging with their audience at all. Alfred Brendel, a pianist for whom I have the greatest respect, has described performance as a sacred communion between the artist and the composer. But what about the audience? Music is communication, a two-way street.

I believe in collaboration. I think that is the most entertaining and effective way to write for me, personally.

I believe the better I can write on my own, the better I can be of service in a co-write. The big thing with a co-write is trust, and it's not so much what you get the first time you sit down with that writer. It's the relationship that you build that you're in. So you can trust throwing out all your ideas and how strong you think they might be.

We like writing with each other; it's fun.