Musical Control Quotes

When I was writing the Destiny's Child songs, it was a big thing to be that young and taking control. And the label at the time didn't know that we were going to be that successful, so they gave us all control. And I got used to it.

The wild thing is that when I'm in the band, I can control my destiny with four other guys. As a composer sitting in the audience, you can throw good vibes at everybody, but you can't control anybody's destiny, so it's really unsettling.

We kind of established in Sons of Apollo right from the get go that it would be a very collaborative process musically, but after that, I was going to take the reins and control everything else beyond that the way I did with Dream Theater.

The classical guitar has a dynamic to it unlike a regular acoustic guitar or an electric guitar. You know, there's times when you should play and there's times when you gotta hold back. It's an extremely dynamic instrument.

I'm not here to put my music out on the Internet with no support and then say I got creative freedom. I've got creative freedom wherever I go: I don't create anything that I don't want to create. That's freedom. Since when does a company force you to make something that you don't want to make? If they do that, you leave.

I like live musicians and personally orchestrate about 80 to 90% of all my scores.

With the piano I'm completely in control of the gestural situation-not that I'm going to play the piece myself, but I know what's difficult, what's impossible.

I don't have session players come in and guitars, I'm doing the drums, I'm doing the scratching, I'm doing every sound you hear and that's always been my way. And not only that, I'm very meticulous about it just sounding right.

From when I young, a lot of the things I grappled with, with instruments, was how large they were. When someone places a large guitar in your lap, it's hard - I'd learned how to play a guitar when I was a kid, but I never really felt like I was in control.

Mitch Miller knew exactly what he wanted me to sing. He didn't want me to improvise at all.

No! Once the music plays, it creates me. The instruments move me, through me, they control me. Sometimes I'm uncontrollable and it just happens - boom, boom, boom! - once it gets inside you.

If I'm proud of one thing in my playing, it's being able to slow it down and focus on the melody.

The singing tells everybody what to do musically.

The most important thing for me is to have as much control over what's going on in front of me as I possibly can, so because of that, I don't play to a click track, and I don't have anything on the grid. Everything is triggered by me. Everything is played by me. Everything is within my control.

The basic idea of a hyper instrument is where the technology is built right into the instrument so that the instrument knows how it's being played - literally what the expression is, what the meaning is, what the direction of the music is.

If you play the guitar, you've got to hold the chords down with one hand while you play with the other, so you're limited to one hand. But the piano is the king of instruments because you have your 10 fingers, which become the 10 members of the orchestra.

Great cataclysmic things can go by and neither the orchestra nor the conductor are under the delusion that whether they make this or that gesture is going to be the deciding factor in how it comes out.

That's what being a front man is all about - the idea of having something supple underneath you, that machine that roars and can turn on a dime.

I feel so entirely in my element with a full orchestra; even if my mortal enemies were marshalled before me, I could lead them, master them, surround them, or repulse them.