Musical Imagination Quotes

Songs come to me and I hear them. At least in part, they are very complete; I hear the whole chorus, including the drum pattern, the base, the countermelody, the basic harmonic structure and the main thrust of the lyric.

Absolutely, I'm living my dream. Yeah. My wife always jokes, says I'm a big kid, you know, playing in the studio and coming up with melodies and sounds. And, you know, I wouldn't know any other way because I just have music in my head all the time, and I just love it.

I want to be the most melodic artist. 'His music ability, the way he write, his creativity is undeniable.' I want people to say that about me.

R. Kelly is different - music is always going through his brain. I remember we'd be having a conversation, and he'd choose a word I said and write a whole song to it.

What makes a Beethoven symphony spectacular, what makes a Brahms rhapsody spectacular is that the patterns are wondrous.

When The Who first started, we were playing blues, and I dug the blues and I knew what I was supposed to be playing, but I couldn't play it. I couldn't get it out. I knew what I had to play; it was in my head. I could hear the notes in my head, but I couldn't get them out on the guitar.

I sleep music. I wake up, and there's a riff in my head. Every step I take, there's a riff, a beat, or something.

In South America, I heard the 8th Symphony of Beethoven. And the young conductor thought, Beethoven must be heroic. But this is piece which shouldn't be heroic. And this was such a misunderstanding, such a deep misunderstanding.

I usually think in terms of music.

I don't think a guy that really has no understanding about people, or has no interest in understanding people would make a good film composer.

I've never written a song in my life. It's all a big hoax.

If there is no music, I will perish. While I have not learnt music, I can play the tune that comes into my head on the keyboard.

Some music comes from a real place; some music comes from your imagination. It's difficult to find out what's real and what's not, especially with the gangster stuff.

One does not play the piano with one's fingers: one plays the piano with one's mind.

I don't think I think when I play. I have a photographic memory for chords, and when I'm playing, the right chords appear in my mind like photographs long before I get to them.

Writing music - particularly music without lyrics - calls almost exclusively on the subconscious.

I've always felt a great affinity with music. I've felt myself to be more of a musician than anything else, though I'm not proficient in any one instrument. But I think I have a musical sense of things... and writing seems to me to be a musical experience - rhythmically and in many other ways.

How good are the best musical imaginations? Can a trained musician, swiftly reading a score tell just how that voicing of dissonant oboes and flutes over the massed strings will sound?

I've always heard music in my head since I was a little kid, so I've always played towards that. If I felt bad, that's what I did.

What strangely enchanted tunes gush forth during those sleepless nights!

In 'thinking up' music I usually have some kind of a brass band with wings on it in back of my mind.

I never think about rhythm versus melody; I've always just played to what's in my head.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

There's no field of music which doesn't have good ideas.

I've actually had a melody on my guitar since the day I learned how to play it, back when I was 7. And for some reason I can't add lyrics to it.