Quote

But when you have to deal with notes, and to be able to make a full definition of what a sound is - if you are not around that environment, then you'll find you lose that feel, that momentum, you lose all that.

That's what it is that you rehearse - the making of music, not the playing of notes as abstractions.

Maybe in music you're making an auditory environment and maybe you change your environment around you to suit your own way.

It must be a hellish thing to know what's possible in music, to be hearing things all the time and not have an appropriate outlet for them.

Whenever I get an idea for a song, even before jotting down the notes, I can hear it in the orchestra, I can smell it in the scenery, I can see the kind of actor who will sing it, and I am aware of an audience listening to it.

Listening is not just hearing what someone tells you word for word. You have to listen with a heart. I don't want that to sound touchy-feely; it is not. It is very hard work.

I don't listen to music when designing. We create in silence. I go through a torturous process because everything has to be precise and right.

It's not the music you hear in your head that other people are going to hear. You have to be able to make it true enough to the image in your head, and that's where technique and technology come in, for sure, and knowledge. It's not true and will never be true that someone who knows nothing can sit in a basement and make great music.