Musical Clarity Quotes

I think my music has connected with the audience because I always have a clear vision about my songs.

I don't know if it's a sign of all the chaos that is happening out there or not, but I've lately craved the structure and order of classical music, the balance and symmetry.

Great music is just very clear. Sonically and lyrically, you understand the point of view, you understand the melodies, you understand the vibe, and you understand the lyric pretty damn quickly. To me, that doesn't make it 'less than' - it makes it 'more than.'

I heard this album as finished, I heard it in dreams . . . It was like the revelations of John the Baptist or something.

God would have to beam into me what I was doing and what the album actually sounded like because usually when I start a project like that, I already know what the album sounds like before I start it.

People are so... seem so chaotic internally, but being filtered through some form, like making a record, sort of filters it down into something that can be understood.

I've found in composing that being simple and profound—having in-depthness in your music—is the most difficult thing to do. Anybody can write a whole lot of notes, which may or may not say something . . . But why make it complicated for the musicians to play? Why make it difficult for the listeners to hear?

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.

Lucidity is the first purpose of color in music.

Anything that's resolvable is boring, musically. And if it's too chaotic, you don't feel tension; it's chaos.

The Stones were always exemplary of one of the best of all rock qualities: tightness. They have always been economical, the opposite of ornamental. Having a very clear idea of what they wanted to say they could go into a studio and make it all up on a three minute cut.

Eventually you get to this point where you understand what you want to do and get across and sound like.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche commenting on the music of Georges Bizet: His music has the tang of sunny climates, their bracing air, their clearness. It voices a sensibility hitherto unknown to us.

When you play Mozart, it's so clean, it's so simple. It's the body naked.

I've always gone into the studio with a very clear understanding of a song, of the words or, if it's an instrumental piece, of the melodies, and that never changes.

One of the problems with musicals and opera is you can't ever hear all the words.

What I've learned how to do as I've gotten older is to take all of the information that I have, and push it aside, and try to distill each song into an emotional theme. The hardest thing that I've ever had to learn how to do in playing music is use the sound of my instrument to create an emotional effect.

Arriving at a simple piece of music is a very difficult balance because, in being simple, you could easily be banal, so maybe it's more difficult to write a simple piece of music than a 12-tone piece where no one understands exactly what it is about.

When you're recording, if you're not really clean in your playing, it sounds like a mess.

Teaching has made me realize that a lot of my fast playing is the musical equivalent of, 'Umm… umm… uhh...' - it's like when you're trying to think of the next thing to say that actually has meaning, you fill space. 'Umm' has about the same meaning as my fast playing.

Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound.

What I don't like to hear in music is something has not been thought through: that a sound is just there randomly. I want to make sure that every single little noise that's in my song is there because it's supposed to be there.

Modern church music is so constructed that the congregation cannot hear one distinct word.

Sometimes you want to use the music in a clarity way to explain something in the film.

I don't like rap that you can't understand. The youth is so quick and alert.