Rob Brown Quotes

It's a weird thing when you make records. You try to hear it before you make it, so you walk into the studio with this idea of what you expect to happen, and that usually changes. That usually turns into something else, and that's a good thing.

If I crave a frequency in the mid, I'll just drag in a sound and try to mold it into what feels right. It happens very quickly. And if I've been making a piece of music for five hours and it sucks, I'll just throw it away.

Typically I go in the studio and whatever I'm contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don't come in with lyrics... I just go in and let it happen.

I'll have the music, and then I'll just turn the microphone on, press Play and Record and sing. And whatever comes out ends up being the melody.

Usually, in the studio, on this sort of thing... you just go out and have a play over it, and see what comes, and it's usually - mostly - the first take that's the best one, and you find yourself repeating yourself thereafter.

When I was working with Talking Heads what would happen typically is that they would go out and start playing a track, and I would always run the tape. I always record everything, even a run through where you're trying to get in tune. That's a principle because sometimes when the situation isn't clear interesting things happen, and they are worth listening to again.

I found the recording sessions very freeing because you can really try things. When you're filming something, if you're improvising a film and you're wasting film and wasting a cameraman's time.

When I sit down to make music, I try to enter a flow; I always open a blank session and just make something that I feel like making.

That is a big danger, losing your inspiration. When I work in film and television I try to do each take a little differently. I never want to do the same thing twice, because then you're not being spontaneous, you're just recreating something.

I just throw it out and see what happens. If it sounds and feels right, then I continue.

I think a lot of what you do in acting, and for the most part singing and dancing and everything, is trial and error. It's all about just seeing what works, and if it does, to use it, and if not, to throw it away.

Producing is just a big learning experience.

I started doing radio pieces with no clear, preconceived idea, except that I have a tendency to be theatrical.

If it were all in the script, why make the film?

Rap is something you can just throw on the skillet and fry up real quick. That's how it comes to me, my train of thought. It's like getting dressed - I don't have to sit down and stare at clothes, I just pick what I like and put it on. But rock, you gotta put it in the oven and let it bake.

When I'm making records, I like it to be quite fast. Don't let the band learn it too well.

I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment.

I come in. I'm going to sketch, I'm going to drape, I don't know what I'm going to do.

Improvising things is always changing. A lot of momentum.

The first scene I ever shot for 'Louie Bluie,' on that first day, I had never seen the camera before. I didn't know where to put it. I just knew what was strong about these guys and what I wanted to capture, so I tried to work backward from there and figure it out. Trial and error. Hopefully I got a little bit better at it.

I always treat each take as a rehearsal for the next take. That way you can find stuff and keep adding and playing until they tell me to stop.

I don't really write any of my raps down. The same, Kanye don't write any of his raps down. Common. It's easy that way. For me, personally, I figure I will lose some of the inspiration in the time of me writing it down, or I'll say it a certain way because I wrote it a certain way.

With Fincher, you can take chances and try things. And what happens is that any pretension and preparation you've done, all the square, intellectual work, you can't keep that up for 40 takes. It breaks down, and new things start popping up. This, for me, is the most exciting thing about film-making.

Working improvisationally in my studio with dancers, it's completely different. We don't have any starting point; we don't have an end point. We don't have anything we are trying to show or do. The picture evolves from nowhere.

Every film that I make is an accident.