Sometimes, a remix is good because it reaches a whole new generation. But when it gets too much, it's irritating. Also, the original composer needs to be credited properly.
A. R. Rahman
I grew up on Bach and Beethoven, and now I'm listening to more modern composers who I can't even name. But since I'm constantly doing music, it's difficult to have that quality time to listen to music and do classical stuff.
I want young Indian composers to be able to do more than just film music. I want to give them the skills that will enable them to create their own palette of sounds instead of having to write formulaic music. It doesn't matter if they become sound engineers, producers, composers or performers - I want them to be as imaginative as they like.
Compared with other Indian film composers, I only write about six movies a year. Others write up to 60.
The more dollars the studio producers put in, the less freedom we have. If the budget hits $100m, they get scared - they'll take the existing score of a successful movie and expect composers to copy it, like wallpaper. The biggest challenge for any composer in Hollywood is to be as creative as possible within those boundaries.
Generally, as a composer, it's perceived as an employer-employee relationship.
Adrian Younge
I'm a film composer, but I'm a hip-hop guy.
The 'Story of Silent Night', which was given to me one Christmas when I was six - it was the story of a down and out composer who had no ideas left, and it was Christmas, and he came up with the hymn 'Silent Night.'
Adriana Trigiani
I don't claim to be a composer, and I realize my approach is pretty dopey in comparison to the true masters of score work. That said, if someone thinks what I do specifically would work for their film, then, of course, let's see what we can do.
Aesop Rock
Why is the feeling of insecurity so prevalent in this field? Because the actor is such a dependent person on other people. If I am a painter, poet, composer, I am not really dependent on others.
Akshaye Khanna
When I write the music for any of my songs, I write as a composer-lyricist in my head.
Alan Menken
As a kid, I loved classical music. Composers like Beethoven were like rock stars to me. Then there were the real rock stars: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan.
I always wanted to be a composer, and I sort of went in to NYU as pre-med because I just thought, 'Well... who actually becomes a composer?'
Whatever I gain from writing lyrics, I feel I lose a little bit for the musical aspect by having that lyrical burden on me. But when I'm liberated from worrying about the words, frankly, I feel I'm a better composer.
I was always a composer since I was a kid, but the BMI Workshop is where the networking really all stems from. So many writers and influences and ways of communicating all sprang out of the time I was a member of that workshop.
I've been very fortunate as a composer to be involved with projects that have really propelled my scores forward. I'm very proud of it.
I'm a very style-driven composer, and I like to give every project its own unique stamp.
Music is at once the product of feeling and knowledge, for it requires from its disciples, composers and performers alike, not only talent and enthusiasm, but also that knowledge and perception which are the result of protracted study and reflection.
Alban Berg
The improvisational nature of jazz musicianship is such that a truly competent performer must be prepared to function as an on-the-spot composer who is expected to contribute to the orchestration in progress, not simply to execute the score as it is written and rehearsed.
Albert Murray
Good writers are monotonous, like good composers. They keep trying to perfect the one problem they were born to understand.
Alberto Moravia
Composers today get a TV script on Friday and have to record on Tuesday. It's just dreadful to impose on gifted talent and expect decent music under these conditions.
I am but an architectural composer.
If I belong to a tradition, it is a tradition that makes the masterpiece tell the performer what to do, and not the performer telling the piece what it should be like, or the composer what he ought to have composed.
Do you know that my very first experience as a composer was a 'Concerto for Accordion?'
I loved a lot of the romantic composers.
Tom Kitt aside - he's in his own category with me, of course - Stephen Sondheim is one of my all-time favorite composers.
We talk too much of black art when we should be talking about art, just art. Black composers must be free to write rondos and fugues, not only protest songs.
Yes, because as composers we are looking for textured voices, and often the singers we find are not trained to perform in a studio environment. So we need technology to doctor their voices to suit the format.
For creators, especially for me as a composer, I am sure for singers also, it is sad. It is not exciting that we have to create something that someone else has already done before.
The pressure is only from the producers and the labels. No composer, no singer would ever want to sing a remix.
I don't have any background in the industry, nobody in my family or friends. So entering into the industry and dealing with the concept of being a Bollywood music composer was daunting initially.
In the 1990s music was a beautiful collaborative process between the composer, lyricist and director. They would exchange ideas and magic used to happen.
I am proud to say I'm a director's composer. People do method acting, I do method composing. I like to get into the skin of the character and go deep into the director's vision.
My father knew classical music very well. Driving in the car, listening to the radio, he could name every composer, every movement, what piece it was. I was fascinated by the way he recognized who wrote what.
Music critics have made it quite clear that any composer who ever contributed a four-bar jingle to a film was to be referred to as a 'Hollywood composer' from then on, even if the rest of his output were to consist solely of liturgical organ sonatas.
When I began, the guitar was en-closed in a vicious circle. There were no composers writing for the guitar, be-cause there were no virtuoso guitarists.
Two pieces of advice for young composers: Go away during technical rehearsals. And do not have a back operation.
If you just want ten songs to fit somebody else's script, then I'm not really the composer for that.
I think the thing's that perhaps sad really is that younger people haven't come in and I think it must have been absolutely fantastic to have worked in the 50's when you had all of the great Broadway composers and when West Side Story didn't win the Tony Award.
I'm a composer, and therefore I know when I've written a good tune. When you've written a good song is when you know that the lyric is completely coalesced with the song.
As a composer at a point where I can absolutely pick and choose what I want to do, I don't want to write about anybody I don't care about.
If we want to share the message of the composers, to give good things back to humanity, we have to dig deep while we can.
I can't say I'd like to concentrate on one particular composer. I'm looking forward to doing a variety.
I simply love Wagner's music. That actually started very early. He was the first composer I was exposed very much to because my parents introduced me to Wagner's music very early.
All composers who came after were influenced by Beethoven, even during his lifetime, both by his personality and by his music. He was a father figure for generations.
Composers are always going back to the past.
Poets these days, like artists and composers, have won for themselves almost unlimited freedom. You can pass yourself off as a painter without being able to draw, as a composer without being conscious of key relationships, and as a poet without making yourself familiar with traditional verse forms.
The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance.
I just wanted to be a composer; I became an actor by default, really. I got a scholarship to a college of music and drama, hoping to take a scholarship in music. But I ended up as an acting student, so I've stuck with that for the last 50-odd years.
I couldn't say I ever dreamt of becoming a composer, a pianist, or anything else for that matter. I have the kind of brain where nothing is set in stone.
