If you force yourself to write away from the piano, you come up with more inventive things. If you're too good a piano player, as some composers are, the music may become flavorless and glib. And if you're not a very good pianist, you're limited to the same patterns.
Sometimes I'll hear some music in my head or I'll go to the piano and mess around and come up with a tune, or be on the guitar and come up with some chords - or I'll come up with lines, or just some words, or just a sentence. It could be the title of a song. I do that all the time. I write titles of songs a lot. And sometimes I'll end up writing a song that I don't have a title for and I'll say, "Oh, this goes with that title".
There was this kind of dictatorship of the Darmstadt school, composers like Boulez and Stockhausen, who were very strict and orthodox. They would not allow other composers to write the music they wanted to write, and only a certain kind of music could be played.
I grew up not really listening to guitar players. Especially when I was studying music, I was just interested in piano players and arrangers and composers; I came to playing in a band from the perspective of someone who never expected to play guitar in a band.
I do write. I actually do want to start my music as well. My sister and I are starting a band. I've been playing a guitar for nine years, and she plays piano, and we sing together. We're going to start up something soon. I mostly am writing songs right now actually, but I would love to write a script someday.
Most of my music theory knowledge is based on piano. But I write on guitar a lot, too. I'm not a great guitar player by any means. I'm not a great instrumentalist. I play piano on stage. I don't play guitar on stage, but I use it to write quite a lot.
My first instrument is piano, I play some piano and guitar. So my solo music is more like real singer/songwriter type stuff.
If I could express the same thing with words as with music, I would, of course, use a verbal expression. Music is something autonomous and much richer. Music begins where the possibilities of language end. That is why I write music.
The way I write music for other artists is the same way I write music for myself. I'll pick up the guitar, and I'll write music, and if I don't use it, I have, like, 500 other songs. If I don't use it, I give it away.
In some ways, it is difficult for contemporary composers to find an audience. Both men and women would love a culture that embraced and hungered for new music, as they did in the Classical period. I tell my students that they should just keep writing, write what pleases you, and don't worry about what people or critics may think about your music.
When you're younger and a little more innocent, you write whatever [lyrics] comes naturally. But as you get used to writing you try to steer the sound and music to different music and throwing in the "kitchen sink" of sorts into the music. With that way, you end up putting in much more than before and you could even make much more next time around.
I put in the sounds of instruments such as the guitar and piano, which everybody hears often, and tried to go with melodies that would sound familiar. Rather than trying to do music that I want to do, I focused on doing music that I want my fans to hear.
If I had to make a choice between only writing about sports or only writing about music, I would probably write about music. I'm not sure why that is. There seems to be more to write about with music, just because it's more of a splintered thing. There's more subgenres. With sports, it's more objective in a way.
I wasn't writing the music. Ed would write a piece of music. I'd listen to it and come up with a melody and then we would arrange it. We'd put it together and I would write lyrics to my melodies.
When I became more involved in music, I had to give up some of my writing in the literary sense. However, on occasion, I would write something for my own pleasure or I would write notes and introductory remarks in the songbooks I put together.
I was writing tons of music in my spare time. I might be on location somewhere, and I'd go home and I'd have my guitar and my little keyboard or something and write music. Or if I was at home, on my piano. I've always been a late bloomer with a lot of things, just in general, so I think this was something that needed to come to fruition in this particular way.