Nick Mason Quotes

Our tunes aren't just sing-along tunes: they're very complex. After a few days of that, you gotta take a break.

I've always worked on all different types of music, some with specific project goals and deadlines and some not. Sometimes I would write a piece of music that is almost like a film score or weird electro pieces, wherever the muse took me, and I still do that.

So basically, I think music at its best can be everything. It can be totally stupid and very intellectual and emotional at the same time. I don't think all those things shut each other out.

The music that I make is built on layers upon layers of musical ideas. I want to keep it fun and fresh to where listeners won't get everything from just one listen. They can go back to it months, weeks, or even years later and hear something that they didn't ever hear before. That's what it's all about.

It's sort of what jazz would be if it stopped being snobby and what rock would be if it stopped being stupid.

I really liked them, not just Syd, but all of them. Roger was very important, I thought, his contribution. And so was Rick's organ playing. It was a good band. It became something else completely, obviously.

We're falling into a place where melody is somewhat lacking in music. Everybody feels like, okay, too much melody or too much harmony, and it kind of goes over people's heads; they don't understand it.

Our music is becoming more mature.

One of our biggest pet peeves is listening to bands that use harmony guitars for the sake of it. If you can't figure out how do something different than Maiden, UFO, or even Boston, then what's the point?

As the years go by, I realize how unique a style rock music is and how delicate you have to be with it sometimes; otherwise, you turn it into pop music or progressive rock or something else.

I think the '70s was a much healthier period for music because people were more innovative and creative.

Every album is unto itself, so whatever sounds we need to come up with, like way back when, we needed horns. So we invented the Lone Wolf Horns, and we learned how to play horns.

I was always a Pink Floyd fan, and I was always into movie soundtracks.

And I'm interested in writing music that takes risks. My point is that maybe the term EDM is pinned on me and my buddies, but maybe it'll be less so if I experiment.

I can't do too much musical movement with a lot of MC's, because they don't know how to follow me. But with Souls of Mischief, I could go anywhere because they are musicians - they rap as musicians, and they play instruments and produce, so they get that.

It's perhaps easier to say what prog rock isn't than what it is: it's not three-minute pop songs, it's not straightforward rock, metal, blues or jazz, but can have elements of all them and more. It's a form that is on the boundaries of many different forms, that is open to all sorts of influences.

Dream Theater has never been a band that hit at a particular fashionable point and said, 'OK, that's basically it.'

Stylistically, we're trying to push things in different ways, but it always comes out sounding like Tool no matter what we're trying to do.

That's what bands like Pink Floyd and bands like Rush and even the Metallica of this world have, which is long, ambitious songs that pull in all different directions.

When some artistes give a hit song, they keep repeating themselves in the same genre. I always try to create something new.

I did alternative rock before. That's why my style is the way it is now.

Most songs on the radio are so straightforward and it just doesn't open up people's minds.

So much of the time people focus on the awesome power of Led Zeppelin, the whole 'Hammer of the Gods' thing, but John Paul Jones, probably because he was a session player, he put a lot of thought into his playing. He didn't just lumber through.

I'm not just a country artist. I've got so any sides to me and the music I write.

I would say 'Home' is a lot richer and deeper than my earlier classical.