Musical Context Quotes

I suppose in some ways doing some of the songs in the show felt a bit like I was doing cover versions. I was covering myself. Not that they didn't feel like my songs, but the way I was approaching them was from a place so outside where they were written. The fact that these songs were in the context of a live show was a new thing.

Most people don't take some things into consideration. When they hear an album, they hear the artist or they hear the lyric or they hear the melody. But they don't really think about the environment in which it was recorded, which is so important. It's that thing that determines what the album sounds like.

More and more, I see myself as a folk musician, and someone who values context.

The New York Dolls did not think of themselves as punk rock. There was no such term at the time. They were just another band in what was called the New York scene.

Dream Theater music, there's a lot of background and context to the songs, as far as the subject matter and the albums they come from.

I can operate in half-a-song format.

People assumed we called the record 'Murray Street' because of its proximity to the World Trade Centre, but that wasn't it at all. Before the attacks, I had simply been walking around taking pictures of things, and I had this photograph of the street sign. We felt it was somewhat evocative and decided to use it on the back cover of the album.

The music for 'The Departed' could have been played by an orchestra, but you make a decision about orchestration based on the context of the film. You want the music to broaden the scope of a film, not just repeat what you're seeing.

The danger in having modern music tied to a period piece is that hearing something may take you out of the moment.

Music does not replace words, it gives tone to the words

Sometimes a song just has to cater to whatever's goin' on. A well-written song is a song that stays true to the subject.

The fact that I'm a fifth of Punch Brothers... that's lucky for me because I feel like I get to operate in the context of one of the great string bands. There's just not another string band I would rather be in, and i'm just compelled to make music for and with string bands. It's what I know, and it's kind of like who I am.

I think of Steely Dan as being of its time, and it may be inseparable from its time.

Lots of times it really doesn't matter what notes you play, but what notes come before and after a run.

Whenever you listen to a piece of music, what you are actually doing is hearing the latest sentence in a very long story you’ve been listening to - all the pieces of music you’ve ever heard.

I made a promise to be as creative as I could, even outside of music.

There's so much you can do with laying words on a bed of music. You can completely change their meaning with the type of music or the way they're sung.

I always try to think of a vocabulary to match different musical situations.

Sometimes you write a song in a certain era and it's got a certain kind of significance.

What makes something pop? It's really just the bed it's placed in. If I grab melodies by Black Sabbath or Metallica and take them out of their musical bed and put them into a pop context, it's not like they wouldn't translate.

Melodies can be good depending on the context. You can have a simple melody, and if the harmony behind it is interesting, it can make a very simple melody really different. You can also have a complex melody. The more complex it is, the harder it is to sing, and then sometimes it can sound contrived. You could write a melody that would be fine on a saxophone but if you give it to a singer, it can sound raunchy.

I think where a lot of the stuff came from is that it started as something else and then it was transformed into something that worked in the context of a song that I might have been working on.

While I was recording 'Ziltoid,' the movie 'Mars Attacks' came on TV, I think, six times in one week. So I don't know if there's any direct references or anything, but the aesthetics of that movie was definitely around while I was creating the music, so I'd be lying if I said it wasn't part of it.

Some very silly songs can have an almost melancholy feeling when you put it in a different perspective.

Music has its own emotional embodiment. It carries an emotion with it. When you associate a lyric with the music, it's much easier; but when you're standing there completely dry in front of the camera with no musical background, just a fine-tuned, get-this-emotional-story across, it's a very, very intense kind of focus.