Benmont Tench Quotes

Being the drummer of Fall Out Boy, and any other project I've ever done, is most importantly about playing for the music. Staying out of the way when it's needed and playing more when it makes sense.

Your solos should be as interesting as any other part of the song.

Because if you've got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.

And I've also come to the conclusion that, as far as guitar solos and things like that are concerned, it's more important to complement the music rather than take away from it.

Ben was more improvisational, and relied less on methodology, and basically is a guitarist who switched to bass, whereas Jeff has a more traditional approach to playing bass in a band, and has a great sense of what his band sounds like, and we lock up nicely.

I had a great acting teacher in high school. But I didn't like acting because it took too many people to get the job done. You have to talk to too many people and listen to others' opinions. With music, you get a few friends together and just make it.

So I am one of those bass players who can do something and musically, it was back then and now it is even more, if you noticed on the new album, I am not playing all the time anymore.

The thing I try to do the most is to play in terms of the song and play in terms of what I'm hearing.

I sing, and the musicians kind of fit things around me.

I don't regard myself as a soloist. It's a color; I put it in for excitement. It's not great loss if a solo has to go. We've made songs without solos.

I'm into the whole song-as-a-piece-of-music thing: if it literally doesn't call for it, if it already has enough stuff going on, then it's okay not to play a solo.

A musical by its very nature doesn't allow for a lot of nuances.

Just like using an instrument, a song calls for different things.

Improvising is writing, too - there was no music and now there's music. So that's composition. And any time you take any sort of a performance liberty, you're making a compositional choice. I don't know a serious performer who hasn't made compositional decisions, who hasn't engaged in the art of composition.

We want to be able to make our own songs and write our own arrangements. We want to incorporate the live sound so we can be free onstage and in the studio recording. That way we can come up with original and creative stuff.

To me, I always felt like drums have to be the support and the driving factor in a song, and there's places where the drummer has to show off and do things and get the spotlight, but not all the time. You've gotta pick and choose. And it's always gotta be about the song. That's really the bottom line.

That's where I think a lot of these guys today are just, 'I'm the drummer, man. Check it out. Here's my lick. I just learned this new drum lick. I'm just gonna blast all over the place.' It's like, 'Man, you've got to let the song breathe.'

I never wanted to write on a staff. I wanted to perform my work.

It doesn't really matter what chords I play, what words I say or time of day it is, as it's only a Northern Song.

I don't like pre-written raps; I think it makes the song better if you listen to the beat first. In a sense, you have to make a marriage with the beat. I ride the beat, hear the flow of the drums, get the melody of my flow, and then from that point, it's a process of what I want to say.

I think John Williams, him and his team, have been incredible orchestrators. By that, I mean how he chooses which instrument plays which note.

You really have to play with the space in a riff so it can be allowed to breathe.

Good music is made with the help of many musicians who express their joy in the swaras.

I have learned that music comes in all shapes and sizes.

I don't even think whether I play the blues or not, I just play whatever feels right at the moment.