A Quote by John Carpenter

I can play just about any keyboard but I can't read or write a note. — © John Carpenter
I can play just about any keyboard but I can't read or write a note.
The program I use is called MED Soundstudio. It's basically a column of numbers that relate to pitch, duration, the type of sound. If I want to play a chord, I have to press keys on a keyboard - like a computer keyboard, on my Amiga - that relate to sharps and flats, note by note.
I can play songs that I hear from a movie and just play it a few times on the keyboard. I will hit all the notes on the keyboard until I find the right key, and then I will play the rest of the song.
It can't be any new note. When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean!
The amazing thing about the cistern is that, if you're improvising in a dead room, you play your note and then you're left with your thoughts and you have to be really quick on your feet and be able to move through many different musical thoughts seamlessly. Improvising there is just, like, you play a note and then you had at least ten seconds to think, "What would be the perfect accompanying note to that?" And then you could add that note. You can just build this puzzle that was really amazing.
You could make your fingers reproduce exactly what you felt, if you really worked at it. I achieved it, not only spending a lot of time at the keyboard but finding ways I could make my fingers reproduce my deepest feelings. It meant, when you hit a note with a finger, you sank into that note all the way to the bottom of the keyboard until it went pow! Right?
I write songs. I perform. I play the guitar. I play the keyboard.
I don't write listening to music, and in a way it seems silly that any writer should have to explain why not, as it's possibly no different from saying you don't eat gourmet dinners or play tennis while you're at the keyboard.
In jazz improv, there is no such thing as wrong notes, only notes that are better chosen and it's not about the note you play, it's about the note you play next.
I either write songs on guitar, or... I don't ever have a keyboard with me, but like, my keyboard on the laptop.
At the beginning of this album I discovered the computer and had great fun playing with the thing. And I realized that, not being a good keyboard player, I could write things in very small sections, give them a certain feel and mess about with bends on the keyboard.
I write so that people will read what I write. I don't want to write a book that a thousand people read, or just privileged people read. I want to write a book whose emotional truth people can understand. For me, that's what it's about.
Everyone likes a bit of variety. I'm sure none of my readers only want to read about anti-heroes or villainous protagonists any more than they only want to read about square-jawed heroes doing the right thing. I just write characters than entertain me and hope they'll be ones that other people want to read about, too.
We have the freedom to either play a tempo or not to play a tempo; to play a note or not to play a note; or to play what some people would say is a sound.
You have to listen to your own voice. Not your heart, not your instincts, not any of that self-permissive psycho-babble stuff. No, none of that. If it was just about instincts and bright ideas it wouldn't need to be a voice. It's about words. You hear them, read them, then you write. But mostly read. Read the bloody poems.
I've written arrangements for choirs and strings in the past, but I usually write music with my voice or a keyboard and then I'll get someone who is good at writing scores to write it out. Or, if I have the luxury of time, I will go in a room and hear the people perform and then change it through what I hear, not on paper. I can read music OK, but I probably rebelled a little - music changes into something else when you read it.
Because I write the music, I write the lyrics, I write the vocal melody lines - I write everything. Just because I let somebody sing something doesn't mean they're more important than the bass player or the keyboard player or the drummer.
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