I think my music is great for film, but I don't have the opportunity, or goesche to go and pitch myself to Hollywood.
I'd love to do music for films.
It's very difficult to make a living in music these days. All it takes is somebody paying.
There's many possibilities for anything.
Of course the headspace for the young musician is whatever the guy who is paying you says, is right, but that's all.
You don't know where you're going.
When I was in eighth grade said sit in at a graduation party and I played 'Boys' by The Beatles and fifty people were standing around with their mouths open. And you kind of get the hint, well maybe I should do this because I'm not very good at sports, I'm not that popular, I'm not very smart, and I'm not very good looking, but when I played the drums, everybody liked it.
My motives at a young age were, "I want to be rich and famous".
The way we teach is a very linear kind of way.
If it's something that I just can't get anywhere with, even if I think this could be a hit, I just drop it and it doesn't get developed.
I've composed all my life and kept things, and even developed things I've done in college into something now.
I don't think I really started to seriously compose until around that time when I was 40.
I always liked to make something creative.
The first time I ever went to Chicago was with Zappa and I had a fantastic experiences with him and every other band I've played with. It's a great music town.
I don't really have that much control over where I play. I put out parameters and I accept what I can. If it's really low, or I had a bad experience at a place then I usually don't play there again.
In America there are some places that are just gorgeous to play.
People YouTube me and crap and then, they probably don't want to see me after seeing a friendly posted YouTube video, so I'm constantly having to take those down.
In America we're in this awful situation, and you know, I hardly get any royalties anymore because music is just stolen from the internet.
I'm very grateful to be where I'm at and be able to play. That's really the bottom line for me. Survival and being able to play.
If I had my brothers I think with just a little bit of the correct marketing, I'd like to be almost exclusively in small theaters. You know, to me it's like a church for music. You can sit down and really give yourself to the performance and be comfortable with good surroundings and a clean, quiet atmosphere.
Some great experiences I've had and little by little I've come to the realization that everything Frank Zappa told me was the truth, whether I wanted to believe it or not. You know, I was young and naive or in denial. But he really was a special, special human being.
All of your experience comes into play when you're composing.
I had been composing just for myself, and people would say I played so orchestrally, and wondered if I thought about having someone write a piece for me for an orchestra. And I thought, I don't want someone else to write that. You know I finally had made an overhead chart of my drums and what pitches the cymbals and toms were tuned to, and what have you. And I started to compose just with what I had for my solo drumming.
Where does Terry live? Somewhere deep inside. So I just let that come out and try to make something out of it without worrying about techniques or rules or any of that stuff. Just do it, you know. As long as it doesn't burn or get deleted, you know, then somebody will find it someday and I will have left something that I think is beautiful.
I'm not Zappa, you know. I'm just Terry.
