Steven Price Quotes

#1. I like taking my leads from what I see rather than trying to impose. I like that way of looking at things and seeing what's on screen and seeing how I can draw music out of it almost.

Steven Price

#2. Every one of us has a response of some kind to music, so I don't think it's fair to ever judge what is proper and what's not.

Steven Price

#3. A lot of composers I know hate temp scores because people get attached to them.

Steven Price

#4. For me, I work very self-contained. It's literally just me sitting in a room doing it until the very end of the process when other musicians come in and instruments are recorded.

Steven Price

#5. My house was full of music. My main memories are of the record player at home: it was all Beatles and Rolling Stones, and we danced around the living room; that started me off on instruments, and I've done nothing else ever since.

Steven Price

#6. No one's being precious about their music. They want the film to be great. And that was the huge lesson for me along the way to be a filmmaker. And yes, I'm leading the music department kind of thing and that responsibility with the music is with me, but really that job is one of many.

Steven Price

#7. Fear is one of those really primal emotions which you don't want to have incredibly exciting modulations and complex harmonies and all that kind of stuff.

Steven Price

#8. With the great people that you work with, it's that they're never giving up and they're never thinking something's finished until they've really, really run out of time. They keep pushing in case there's a better idea around the corner.

Steven Price

#9. The realisation that, depending on where we changed from one note to the next in a melodic line, the music could subtly influence the entire meaning of a scene in so many ways was like a door opening to this amazing new world for me.

Steven Price

#10. I'm a guitarist by background. That's what I used to do for sessions when I was younger and that sort of thing. We have several pianos in the house and I tend to just sit and fiddle around.

Steven Price

#11. William gave the gallerist a grim look. In my experience, he said, crooks are usually the least dishonest of the bunch. It's not in their interest to deceive you, sir. This is how they make their living. Be patient.

Steven Price

#12. The great composers I worked with along the way, I always felt they were filmmakers more than composers. They would talk about the story rather than the music.

Steven Price

#13. It's a funny thing with the inspiration thing. There's always loads of music around that I absolutely love and films going back to when I started making film music in the mid-80's.

Steven Price

#14. A lot of the music editing job is communication and working out what a director really wants the music to be.

Steven Price

#15. It's true, most of my days are spent alone in a dark room! I don't really want anyone to see me trying and failing to nail the 40th take of a simple piano cue.

Steven Price

#16. I tend to work in layers. There's a huge orchestra in the film, but I also record a lot things with very intimate groups, and I like to be able to use the textures of those intimate groups.

Steven Price

#17. For me, anything can be music! I can get huge enjoyment and be moved totally by the purity and perfection of some Renaissance polyphony, but equally I can feel emotion in the expectant hum of a big old guitar amp just before the strings are hit.

Steven Price

#18. I think after everything in the whole process of filmmaking, temp scores are great if you use them for what they're good for, if you use them for that early stage of support for things.

Steven Price

#19. I like expansive stuff that has a lot of space in it, like some of the early Pink Floyd albums.

Steven Price

#20. With a lot of action scores, you're competing with a lot of noise. Say there's a big explosion: the music would conventionally have a lot of Hollywood-style percussion or brass, because that's the only thing that will cut through.

Steven Price

#21. I studied music all the way through college, but as soon as I graduated from university, I got straight into London and got straight into film music. So really my experiences have been being around the orchestras in London and being around the people who work in film music.

Steven Price

#22. I find that I love so much stuff and respect so many people who work in this industry and music in general. I've kind of learned that I've got to just stick to what I can do and try and do that really.

Steven Price

#23. When I was growing up, I loved the films where you'd start them and the score might sound really odd at first and really different, and then by the time you finish, you can't imagine it being any other way.

Steven Price

#24. I go into the whole composer thing quite open to keep on going and keep on trying different things because you never know ... the next idea you have might be the one.

Steven Price

#25. I worry about technical details - did I mix the cello half a decibel too high? Things like that.

Steven Price

#26. In the mid-2000s, I kind of accidentally became a music editor.

Steven Price