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Most often the music does end up in the movie, and sometimes there's a point where I wish that it wasn't, just because I think the score would be more effective if there was less of it. But, again, that's not my call.

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

With a lot of action scores, you're competing with a lot of noise. Say there's a big explosion: the music would conventionally have a lot of Hollywood-style percussion or brass, because that's the only thing that will cut through.

I always shoot my movies with score as certainly part of the dialogue. Music is dialogue. People don't think about it that way, but music is actually dialogue. And sometimes music is the final, finished, additional dialogue. Music can be one of the final characters in the film.

Does film music really matter to the average moviegoer? A great score, after all, can't save a bad film, and a bad score - so it's said - can't sink a good one.

When you have great songs that are going to live longer than the composers, everything you can do to bring those different elements and nuances out, serve the song.

Let's say music is needed for only 43 seconds of film. You have to score it so it is an entity, so it won't bother anyone when it ends so quickly. Or if a song runs 2 minutes and 45 seconds, but the titles run a minute longer, you have to arrange that song so it doesn't get repetitious.

If you play the theatrics too much, you get in the way of your own cause.

Every time you write a song, you're looking for some sort of perfection, and you never quite reach it. You're always looking for that extra missing piece.

A composition is always more than the sum of its parts. In other words, a really good piece of music is more than itself. It's sort of like a prism, which you can see from each facet a single totality.