That whole thing of replicating what others do is a siren call. The sirens lure you to the rocks of unoriginality.
Drummers shouldn't just think of themselves as drummers. If you're going to be a musician, you should expand your horizons, compose things, and work with other instruments.
Making music has gotten easier; selling it has gotten harder. Making music has been democratized, but the market is in the hands of fascists.
[If] you don't have any soul and you don't have any talent, jazz is what you should do. ... any fool can do it; all you gotta do is practice.
Don't believe everything you see on VH1.
Music has an immediate effect. If you want to go beyond that and look underneath, film is a good way of explaining.
People are disappointed when they hear my American accent because they regard 'The Police' as an English band but I've clung to my American-ness all the way.
I studied music for my first two years in college. When I went to UC Berkeley, I failed the admission requirements to get into the music school there, so I studied communications and public policy, which actually were a greater engine for my career than a musical education would have been. If I had gotten into the music department at Berkeley, I'd probably be a timpanist in an orchestra right now.
Ive got Arabic music in my blood.
I'd rather duplicate it myself. Another of our favourite techniques.
I don't have any sympathy for the subject matter, [but] I have great respect for rap artists. In fact, not for the rap artists, but the people who make the music over which they rap. Rap music - the music itself is incredible - but [the people that make the music] are hardly ever credited.
The great opera composers were so good at their job, that the whole genre came to be built around the concept of the composer's vision.
In a film score, the last thing you want to do is take people out of the movie. The music is secondary. In opera, the music is the main event.
