Looking back on it, now I can identify the points in my life when I wasn't playing, and music - and didn't have that outlet - those were the points when I was most unguided and self destructive because I didn't have that channel to get those energies out. I'm a much healthier person when I play music.
Edinburgh has a similar climate to Bergen - it's very rainy and grey. There were a lot of days I'd sit inside in front of the computer, make music, and dream about summer - instead of the rainy reality outside.
It's all about the mood I'm in and the scene I'm writing. 'Cause work controls my life, writing controls my life, performing controls my life. So I don't listen to any music that's not an influence on what I'm working on that day. Music is a big influence in my work and sometimes drives the energy of where I want to go.
Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.
I don't know how many 78-year-olds are listening to 98 Degrees music.
There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism.
I have a room dedicated to music and recording. I go there first thing in the morning and just before I go to bed. And it has a window to my street, so I can watch all the crazies walking by.
Part of what I enjoy about writing classical music is communicating through the score and collaborating with such amazing musicians.
Every child should try everything: sport, music, art, mathematics; they can do it all. Copying and competition are now seen as twin evils, but they are both useful tools.
At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music.
My favorite music is never the music that anyone else likes, and other people's favorite songs are always my least favorite.
I grew up with music very much in my life. I achieved success by combining my training as an accountant with my family upbringing and love of music.
My first album, 'Get Lifted,' was a hip-hop soul album that had some of its roots in the church, as far as the sonic choices, in the way that I sing and write songs. I have always had that as part of my background and part of my influence when I am making music.
I lost connection with music for a while, but I've always loved it.
I think there has never ever been a career like John Williams'. That whole 'Jaws' phenomenon - there's nobody that knows how to use music like Spielberg, and John is just the perfect analog to Spielberg.
I always loved bluegrass, but there was so much I didn't know about American country music in respect to the origins of this country. It was interesting to see the evolution of it.
People think that it's their sovereign right to download music and not have to pay for it.
I'm releasing a single. It's called 'Live it Up.' It was based on my Euro trip. I only write my own music. I don't let other people write it at all. So I've been working on that a lot. There's three singles coming out. The producer of The Fray who did their double-platinum album 'How to Save a Life,' I'm working with him. He's producing me.
I use music as therapy. Whenever I'm feeling angry or needing some 'me' time, which is quite regularly, I'll go and bang a piano or flesh out something on a guitar.
Rap music is amazing, it's beautiful. But the problem is the lyrics. The person who writes the lyrics - that's the problem.
I think Sean Parker damaged the music business with Napster.
The art of DJing is sharing music with one another... The technology's definitely taking it into a new direction to where it's really becoming performance-based.
Usually, when I see films that don't have any score attached to them, I think they're beautiful. I love just the naked sound of the voice. That's already music.
For me, personally, the most interesting music comes from the popular sector - from film and pop music - since contemporary classical music got stuck and went into directions where it lost a lot of the public by over-intellectualizing.
I've always believed in good music over bad music. I believe in two sorts of musics. And the lines that separate us, I don't believe in that. That's for people who need to easily define what they're hearing. Me, I'm cool with everything and anything I'm hearing that's music. It comes under one definition for me.
For a long time, I resisted seeing 'The Sound of Music,' but when I finally did, I cried.
Through music I either tame my demons or unleash them and allow them to be what they are. I don't want the music to be about provocation, I want the music to bring you to a place where you feel at home.
What I do isn't black music; it's just my music.
I've seen 'Hamilton.' I'm obsessed. The music is crazy.
There was a naive quality in 1982 around technology and the start of video games. And that's like the start of electronic music - there was this statement and, ideologically, these things to fight for.
Why can't we have a concert with food? Your typical cooking demonstration, there's just no enthusiasm. There's no energy behind it. I said, 'What if we take a cooking demonstration and fortify it with a lot of good music? ... Drive it to the next level?'
I lost my innocence with Johnny Cash. I used to watch the 'Johnny Cash Show' on television in Wangaratta when I was about 9 or 10 years old. At that stage I had really no idea about rock n' roll. I watched him, and from that point I saw that music could be an evil thing - a beautiful, evil thing.
I've realized that I owe people a look behind the scenes of my own story, because I don't think anyone can have a true understanding of the music without an insight into where it came from.
That's what it is that you rehearse - the making of music, not the playing of notes as abstractions.
In 2011, I released my first album called 'International Villager.' I had no support, and whatever money I had made, I put it all in the album. I shot the music video for 'Brown Rang' with one lakh dollars. I spent so much money, as I just wanted to put it up on YouTube, as I knew that my market was there, and it became a huge hit.
'The Muppet Show' was huge. I watched it all the time as a kid, and I really loved the way they used music on that. I also remember hearing the radio in the car as a kid, like Stevie Wonder and Simon and Garfunkel.
