Geoff Downes Quotes

Paul has more, I think, of a feel for the stage. Whereas I have it more for the notes themselves. I love record making and mixing, arranging, producing. That I love. I love to make beautiful things, but I don't like to perform.

Music feels so environmental to me, especially the process of working with synths or mixing. I started thinking about music as a psychological landscape as well. It's a landscape of the mind.

I like being in a recording studio. I like watching a song go from the simplicity of the original music.

Analog, electronic, whatever it happens to be, I simply love and adore literally every aspect of making music.

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

I'm a painter in sound.

I think a lot of musicians play for the playback. I mean, that's the joy of recording - you want to hear what you've done and what you've contributed - but never listening to that playback kind of removes the intellectual part of making music, and it removes the tendency to be revisionist.

There's a clip where he had someone miming me running around from keyboard to keyboard. Oh dear, I am sure a lot of people didn't know what he was going on about.

To me, there is nothing better than me going into the studio with a live band and hearing those violins and that echo and that sound. I mean I loved it.

I go in and sing the song and arrange it and mix it and that's it. It's no different than playing in clubs.

I write a song to be recorded. And to some extent to be performed, but definitely more to be recorded than performed, because the recording will last longer than a performance.

I find it hard to get excited by just a sound. I have to have a song there, then I'll find what used I can make of that sound within the song.

I wouldn't mind doing a soundtrack someday.

I wrote my first song, 'Conversion', to this little hip-hop instrumental. I went to an open-mic, plugged my iPod into the P.A., and sang over the beat.

I started trying to do my own music at home, and I was like, 'You know what, I can play the guitar, sort of. And I can do these things, sort of. And I can make these crazy noises on my computer, sort of. But I need a ridiculously good drummer. I need someone to help me with string arrangements.'

I still think that I'm playing instruments, not just pushing buttons and there it goes. It's interactive and alive with the sound and the manipulation and it plays like instruments.

I'm very lucky to work in so many different arenas of the entertainment industry and I do enjoy them all, but making music - original music - in the studio or live onstage is definitely my favorite thing to do.

The best musicians or sound-artists are people who never considered themselves to be artists or musicians.

I feel like, a lot of times, when you have a specific sound that you want and are searching for, you want the right group to help you put the kind of music out that you want.

I honestly just hope to continue creating music that people can relate to and connect with in a personal way.

You have to focus hard on recording songs that you believe in.

I think, for me, a way to really come up with new ideas and come up with new ways of writing music is to create a unique sound palette or soundscape for all the films I'm working on.

I was completely fascinated by the studio process and layering sounds and creating soundscapes out of layering massive squalls of sound.

The drone is a very fundamental part of my music, although it's not always present.

Technology means the kind of music you can make on your own if you've got an imagination is amazing. It's crazy that I can sit with a Mac and a keyboard and a mic and create a symphony.