James Horner Quotes

When you're working on film music, you're only working on 20, 30-minute sections at a time.

To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I'm writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I'm going to play for the opening sequence.

Every time I see a film or TV show, I think about how that composer made those choices and how that director envisioned music and how that could work onstage or in a film and how you could support that even further by putting lyrics to it.

When I'm writing film music, I feel like I'm more a filmmaker than a composer. It's more about what the film needs. I'm basically part of the team that's creating a film, and the music is a very important part, but it's just one part of many.

When I compose for any film, I always work with the story in mind.

What kills music in films is when it's done as performance, drawing attention to the fact that someone's in the background playing it.

Does film music really matter to the average moviegoer? A great score, after all, can't save a bad film, and a bad score - so it's said - can't sink a good one.

I write music to both the situations and the lyrics in plays.

I write the music, produce it and the band plays within the parameters that I set.

When you make music, you're forming these invisible vibrations in the air into different shapes and consistencies and speeds in order to create music, and understanding how the math of that works just gives you more colors to paint with, and allows you to get to what you want quicker.

I love putting the music together. It's like art.

Well, I've been recording myself on a computer since I was about 13 or 14. So it's completely entwined with my creative process. Essentially, it allows you to make music that's better and smarter than you are, by using your ears to lead the way.

One always has to remember these days where the garbage pail is, because it's so easy to make sounds, and to put sounds together into something that appears to be music, but it's just as hard as it always was to make good music.

So film music is something I absolutely wanna get involved in.

I'm not afraid of being thought of as someone who is associated with film music. Why not? If it's a good song, what does it matter?

I'd love to do a whole soundtrack to a movie.

The bass line is the anchor for me. I started with the bass, and either doubled that and then added the harmonies, or sometimes added my own harmonies that I've always wanted to sing on the song. And then it just went on from there - singing violin parts and trumpet parts and just trying to emulate the sounds of the instruments.

In that long sequence, when Lawrence enters in the desert to rescue a lost man, Lean listened the music I wrote and wanted to extend the scene to let my work stay completely.

When I don't know what the music is going to be for a scene, I imagine some sort of orchestration going on and damned if they don't usually come up with a similar kind of thing.

It's about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness - sonic goodies.

Normally, when people compose for film, you give them the film, and they look at it, and they compose it.

Music is half the film.

I wouldn't mind doing a soundtrack someday.

I've done some music for films and I really enjoy doing it.

Music is the subliminal connecting adhesive in film, or at least in narrative feature films.