Musical Transcription Quotes

My thinking musically has always been more advanced - it is difficult to get it down onto paper sometimes, even now.

I just can't read music.

I never learned to read music.

I began composing works which were imitative of the music I was being told about. I was also very interested in translating the music into visual terms.

My music is based on melody and when I play the piano, it's as if I'm singing with them. When you try to transform that into a vocal, there was very little adjustment.

If I'm not in an environment where I can record, it's great to be able to write something down, to be able to know how to do that, to be able to write notation. You grab a piece of paper and there it is. It's the cheapest recording equipment you can buy: a piece of manuscript paper and a pencil!

It has never been necessary for me to learn how to read music.

I didn't have bands that I was playing with growing up, so I learned to try to adapt and play these songs that were guitar songs on the piano, and sing them.

I just play music by listening and responding, so I don't know anything about writing songs or arranging and all of this stuff. You know, it's in my head, but I don't know how to get it out.

I've always wanted to pull off 'No One is to Blame' by Howard Jones. I've done that a couple times in solo shows, but I can't figure out how to do that with a full band and make it work.

I'm always trying to emulate guitar. Especially when I'm playing the trombone, that's what I think about. Like, I listen to guitar players every day: Warren Haynes, Lenny Kravitz, Prince, different people. And I'm always trying to find out a way how I can get my trombone to sound like that.

I can play songs that I hear from a movie and just play it a few times on the keyboard. I will hit all the notes on the keyboard until I find the right key, and then I will play the rest of the song.

Then the bow orchestra began to play an apocalyptically beautiful canon, one of those pieces in which, surely, the composer simply transcribed what was given, and trembled in awe of the hand that was guiding him.

I had come from an orchestral background, but I didn't really have any orchestral pieces for film.

I worked out the keyboard parts on the progressive rock classic 'The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway' and somehow managed to play it all on acoustic guitar.