Jonny Greenwood Quotes

But the classic Tenacious D songwriting is Jack or myself will have an idea - I might have a riff - and we'll improv. And once Jack's feeling it, we turn on the tape recorder and start jamming, improv on that riff, improv on those lyrics, and then go back and see if there's anything good in there.

When it comes to songs and music, yeah, people love to sing and dance and play music and tunes, and that stream of consciousness that exists in music, nobody knows where that comes from.

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

To have everything written for you... It's not really creating. That's why I think symphony drummers are so limited. They 're limited to exactly what was played a hundred years before them by a thousand other drummers.

Music. It's all creativity right here, right now.

Music is supposed to be inspired.

You're always starting with a nugget of truth, whether it's a song or an improv scene.

What I do is, I look at rock guitar players, and I say to myself, 'What is this guy doing? What does he have that can inspire me?' I try to see what other people are doing and take what they have and turn it and twist it into my own thing.

Music is something you can't really put in terms like in a sport, like running or football - that you win if you score more. In music, there's nothing like that.

It's a great honor when somebody takes your song and does something different with it. That's what music is all about: to constantly change what somebody else has done.

Over the years, I played with a couple of spectacular guitar players, and playing with them has made me play better than I knew how to play. I hope the same thing is true with acting.

Usually I like to improvise. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the piece, I like to improvise because I think it brings certain freshness and a reality to it, as long as it doesn't go too far out of the box.

I shall always respect the composer. If I embellish, it is his idea I am embellishing.

I just start playing music and eventually I sing something, a line of a verse or a B section or a line of a chorus, and the line that I end up singing is related to the music I'm playing, if that makes any sense. And I go from there.

There's art in rhythm playing. Just find it. Make your own art. Find your place, and when it's your time to solo, it's your time to shine.

I never think about rhythm versus melody; I've always just played to what's in my head.

I think its so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn't exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no ones ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips.

I enjoy songwriting. It's slow-motion improvising.

Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.

The art of interpretation is not to play what is written.

In the U.K., classical music is composed by individuals and written down. Indian music is based on certain sequences called ragas. When I perform live, 95% of the music is improvised: it never sounds the same twice.

For me making music is part social, part interaction, part collaboration.

Don't be afraid to take liberties with this music. Try and put some of yourself into it.

I'm having a blast being the music director at the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. It certainly is challenging for me, but I love challenges.

I may play the same songs night to night, but I never play them the same way.