Esa-Pekka Salonen Quotes

If some of our works are symphonies, then wrapped walkways was chamber music.

What came to me as a revelation was the use of rhythm in developing an overall structure in music.

I like structure, cool, hip songs, and fun, hooky music.

The only type of music I don't like is Dixieland jazz. It's just a little too happy and noisy for me. I like intervals and spaces in my music. There's just something about Dixieland.

Drums just always sounded like the most fun part of that good music for me.

I just love a slow groove. I feel so comfortable in it. But I listen to a lot of fast music, a lot of techno and house.

I can't hear rhythm.

Rhythm is God. I think, without rhythm, you can't create - there is no art.

Time is the main subject for any musicians, music writers, composers.

But those musics do not address the larger kind of architecture in time that classical music does, whatever each one of us knows that classical music must mean.

Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

When you sit down and think about what rock 'n' roll music really is, then you have to change that question. Played up-tempo, you call it rock 'n' roll; at a regular tempo, you call it rhythm and blues.

And if you are playing in several meters at once, there has to be a - not a rigid - but there definitely has to be a reference to a common pulse in the band.

There's not much music I'll listen to if it doesn't have pretty heavy swing. Rhythm is so important. Punk rock would have more power and feeling if it had swing.

The heart of a music is its rhythm. The heart of rhythm section music is the rhythm.

The records that I grew up listening to had feel, and the drummers that inspired me - like Stewart Copeland, Neil Peart, Phil Collins and Roger Taylor - all had their own voice and individual style.

Some songs go super-quick; some take a really long time.

I am about the arrangements and the layers of depth in the music.

Essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything just repeated patterns, musical patterns.

Yeah, one of the main ways is for songs that make me want to move.

I learned to play drums to the 'Blue Album.'

We've always been quite clear about how we want the songs to sound. If we can imagine the song being played at a party, and it gets people tapping their feet, then it's in.

Our songs all carry the same way.

Most drummers are covered with a million drums, and everyone is like, 'What are you doing back there?'

I've always really liked the rhythm element of songs.