My mother was into church so she listens to gospel music. I like the way gospel is composed… the great vocalist chord and the way they make you feel.
It’s interesting to see how ‘Arth’ still touches a chord in people’s hearts all these years later. Men were very hostile when the film was shown in 1984. They were angry and said things like I’m teaching women wrong things by saying they have the choice to walk out of their husband’s home if they are cheated upon.
For me, as much fun as it is to watch wrestling is, actually wrestling is what struck a chord with me.
Rather than doing a hero-oriented film, I love being a part multi-starrer film, because such films always strike a chord with audience.
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.
Just because you can leap off a drum kit doing a scissors kick while hitting a chord, people expect you to be an extrovert socially. But I’m not always comfortable with the idea of small talk at a party.
I always take care to have interesting chord progressions, because you can have the best sound design in the club, and you’ll kill it in the club, but in five years, kids will have better sound design. But if your music is good, you’ll always be able to listen to it, even in 20 or 50 years.
You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.
I studied chord theory and started playing the piano.
The first thing that inspires any song is a chord progression. When I have one I really like, I get into the lyrics even more.
I often speak publicly, and when I do, I also get to listen to other presenters. The most memorable are the ones that hit an emotional chord with a tight story and a punch line. No fluff. Keep it creative and concise. Greatness exists in quality, not quantity.
