Quotes on Making Music
“I’m still hunting down the great tune that I’ve never written. It’s somewhere out there. And that’s what makes me get up in the morning. I just know I can do better.”
This is taken from the Vanity Fair interview with composer Hans Zimmer. After watching Hans’s lesson series for Masterclass, it puts a smile on my face to think back to watching that series and remembering Hans’s self effacing attitude. Never satisfied with the work he has done, always convinced that there is more in the tank.
Pages and pages could be written just on that Masterclass series of videos alone It’s an utter joy to watch the master at work, exploring some key topics of the world of composition, with his unique blend of whit, charisma and modesty.
“When you make music you have this really amazing little moment when you make it and then its yours and nobody else in the world knows that it exists, nobody else knows you’ve made it..You just enjoy it on your own and its yours.”
This quote comes from another incredibly inspiring video from the ‘Creators’ YouTube channel interviewing Four Tet on the 10th anniversary of his classic album Rounds.
Hebden talks about track 6 from Rounds, ‘Unspoken’, and the process of writing the track on the Eurostar from Paris back to London. In putting together the piano and drum loop which totalled 3 or 4 seconds, Hebden created a moment of brilliance, and spent the remainder of the journey listening to nothing but that, so happy was he with the thing that he had created.
Emphasising the quote above, the story encapsulates the sheer joy of making music; crafting something really special that can surprise even the person who made it. These are the moments that everyone making music are constantly chasing.
Links to the videos featured below:
Vanity Fair “Hans Zimmer Breaks Down His Legendary Career, From “Rain Man” to “Inception” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGs_NT4iL2c
Words by Luke Robinson
