Musical Intent Quotes

I don't go in the studio to make music that won't matter. I go in every night to try to make a point and make the best music that I can make.

I didn't aim at anything except good music.

One of the things I love about jazz music is that intent is first and execution is second. In classical music, execution is first and intent is second, meaning that you must first learn a piece before you can truly add your interpretation to it.

We had something to say. Whenever we played, people didn't dance, they listened.

I have learned that while your putting your record together you can get so caught up in making what you want that you forget what you wanted in the first place.

I never saw myself as a spokesman for a generation. It was all a bit heavy for me. I saw myself as a songwriter and wrote for myself, which I still do, and I also wanted to communicate with my audience.

We didn't start out to make a protest record at all. That would have been too shallow. As usual, it was simply a case of absorbing what's going on around us.

Sometimes the music just has to tell the story without you trying to tell the story. It depends on the type of music you want to make. If it makes you feel good and party then you go with that. If it makes you feel like speaking on something real and doing a story then it's the beat just has to have the story.

Sure, I love people, and I want to communicate with people. I mean, what is music anyway? It's a form of communication - at least for me it is. And that's why I play the kind of music that I think - that I hope - can communicate with people.

I make music to generate atmospheres, not to complement already existing ones.

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.

It was the Control album that was really about what I wanted to do.

I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing.

I don't concentrate on technical things like where a microphone is placed and things like that. As a producer, I try to keep the initial feeling from when I first heard a song and make sure we do what were initially aiming for.

I'd rather people interpret the songs and get whatever they can out of them instead of thinking about me crying in a room with a guitar.

I only ever really follow the music, that's what I'm about, I don't think about it too much. I just wanted to make a piece to sleep through, to sort of explore that sleeping space as a listening space and to have a different encounters between our listening minds or hearing minds and music. I think that's really interesting. After that I feel I've done my job.