The number of people who can copulate properly may be few; the number who can write well are infinitely fewer.
I'm older than my sister so I started writing first. I started writing at school. I was always top of my class in composition, essays, English Lit and all of that.
I am such a Luddite when it comes to making music. All I can do is write at the piano.
Bach in general was so good with the violin. He just finds the genius way around his music on the instrument.
The photographer's art is a continuous discovery which requires patience and time.
I had a big background in listening to classical music and I started trying to compose, like I was playing the guitar but I heard an orchestra in my head.
Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.
If children haven't been read to, they don't love books. They need to love books, for books are the basis of literature, composition, history, world events, vocabulary, and everything else.
I have been a photographer all my life....and have made photographs of many things and for many reasons. But one thing that becomes more and more apparent is that I am simply only as good as my next photograph. That's the one that counts the most....For this reason I find it a delight to face a new day, and to develop that new roll of film. It's a great way to live.
Taking the photograph is the easiest part for me
I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began to compose music, and at the most advanced level. I had never studied such things as harmony.
My father taught me to paint when I was young with watercolors and so I learned at a very young age the essential elements of the value of light and composition.
To play with a band all of the time, just about nightly, was good for me because I wrote lots of arrangements and I got a lot of my transposition and chords ironed out.
There are things that I teach, about building photographs, and that's why people come to my workshops. When people come to the workshops, they're consumed with seeking the subject, and I teach seeking the setting.
You don't just go to the studio and say, 'I'm going to write a hit.' It becomes a hit when people like your compositions.
I'm very fond of this phrase: 'Collage is not a refuge for the compositionally disabled.' If you put together the pieces in a really powerful way, I think you'll let a thousand discrepancies bloom.
I used to feel like I wasn't a good songwriter when I couldn't finish a song by myself.
I wrote music as soon as I knew notation.
One can imagine a world without essays. It would be a little poorer, of course, like a world without chess, but one could live in it.
Writing, madam, is a mechanic part of wit. A gentleman should never go beyond a song or a billet.
I don't think that you can write music if you don't know how to play an instrument. You have to know the basics, then you can go forward.
I do think reading is the best practice for writing, along with writing all the time. I actually never liked writing on my own or in school until I'd had my blog for a while and realized I'd been writing every day for years.
I would love to compose for an entire film because it will be a different experience.
Not many composers have ideas. Far more of them know how to use strange instruments which do not require ideas.
I write arrangements. I'm sort of a wannabe composer.
