You always hear these stories of how Hollywood is so merciless on composers and how they all get beaten up. Nobody beats me up as much as I beat myself up. This is what I love doing and I have one life to do it in, and I better do it right. I better do it well.
I’ve spent my life trying to make things simpler. Because I find ultimately that complicated doesn’t reach the heart.
As the seconds of our lives are ticking away, you have to realize that life needs to be an adventure.
I want to go and write music that announces to you that you can feel something. I don’t want to tell you what to feel, but I just want you to have the possibility of feeling something.
Why get up in the morning unless you’re going to have an adventure?
Never let your wife prevent you from buying equipment. A car will not buy a synthesizer, but a synthesizer can buy a car.
If I play you a piece of music, that’s when you can truly look inside me.
There’s a power that movies and music has, that can move you and motivate you to look at your neighbor in a slightly more respectful way, and look at cultures in a more inclusive way.
Anything can become a musical sound. The wind on telegraph wires is a great sound; get it into your machine and play it and it becomes interesting.
If you talk to any director, they’ll say music is fifty percent of the movie.
You’re going to fail a few times, because that is the only time you actually learn something.
Electronic music lends itself to an abstract way of storytelling, so it keeps evolving. Theres a whole movement truly driving music further and there is no other music innovating as much as film music.
If something happened where I couldnt write music anymore, it would kill me. Its not just a job. Its not just a hobby. Its why I get up in the morning.
What are you going to do when you are not saving the world?
You have to remain flexible, and you must be your own critic at all times.
The rules are: The more playful we get, the more we can get rid of the rules.
Inspired music arises from an inspired movie which arises from an inspired script.
I think one of the things which always is forgotten in music class, is the first thing you have to do as a musician is you have to learn how to listen.
I’ve never had a real job in my life. I didn’t learn anything, I was terrible at school. It was just this thing. Music was all I wanted to do.
Having the great opportunity on a daily basis to sit in front of a blank page is terrifying, and at the same time really exciting. I can’t actually get better at my job, because every time you finish something you start with a blank page, with nothing.