Zappa was very technical and impressed by things that were musically challenging – weird time signatures, strange keys, awkward chord sequences. Zappa was important to me as an example of everything I didn’t want to do. I’m very grateful to him, actually.
I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming.
In England and Europe, we have this huge music called ambient – ambient techno, ambient house, ambient hip-hop, ambient this, ambient that.
My guitar only has five strings ’cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there.
I believe in singing to such an extent that, if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing becomes a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for cooperation with others.
I think we’re about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world.
Most game music is based on loops effectively.
If you want to make computers that really work, create a design team composed only of healthy, active women with lots else to do in their lives, and give them carte blanche.
In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.
I’m often accused of being ahead of my time, but it’s simply not true. The truth is that everybody else is behind.
Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.
Pop is totally results-oriented and there is a very strong feedback loop.
I’m always interested in what you can do with technology that people haven’t thought of doing yet.
I’m a painter in sound.
One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.
Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You’re glad someone’s done it but you don’t necessarily want to listen to it.
If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn’t bother to find new ones.
I’ve got nothing against records – I’ve spent my life making them – but they are a kind of historical blip.
I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.
Instruments sound interesting, not because of their sound, but because of the relationship a player has with them. Instrumentalists build a rapport with their instruments, which is what you like and respond to.
Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.
My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.
People tend to play in their comfort zone, so the best things are achieved in a state of surprise, actually.
Well, there are some things that I just can’t get out of my head, and they start to annoy me after a while. Sometimes they’re of my own creation, as well – and they’re just as annoying. It’s not only other people’s ear worms that bug me, it’s my own, as well.
Although cover notes for classical music albums tend to say that the trill of flutes suggests mountain streams and so on, I don’t think anybody listens to music with the expectation that they’re going to be presented with a sort of landscape painting.
I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy.
I have the ’77 Million Paintings’ running in my studio a lot of the time. Occasionally I’ll look up from what I’m doing and I think, ‘God, I’ve never seen anything like that before!’ And that’s a real thrill.
When I started working on ambient music, my idea was to make music that was more like painting.
Agressive music can only shock you once. Afterwards its impact declines. It’s inevitable.
Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!
I’m always interested in what you can do with technology that people haven’t thought of doing yet. I think that’s sort of a characteristic of the way I’ve worked ever since I started.
My shows are not narratives.
I take sounds and change them into words.
Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.
One often makes music to supplement one’s world.
The big message of gospel is that you don’t have to keep fighting the universe; you can stop, and the universe is quite good to you. There is a loss of ego.
Something I’ve realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we’re smart about it.
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