Andrew Sega - Music Quotes

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If someone gave me a million dollars to run a music label, I would focus on creating a specific artistic point of view, and creating some channel to build a fanbase. Warp Records was a great example of a label that had a particular style, and many people would buy records just because the artists were associated with the label.

Andrew Sega
Once you have a basic grasp of the theories underlying music, you can pretty much pick up any instrument you want.

Andrew Sega
I try to avoid categorizing music as much as I can, though. Everyone steals so much from everyone else these days, the lines between genres are very washed-out.

Andrew Sega
I'm not a big fan of asynchronicity just for its own sake - a lot of people push rhythmic variation so far that the basic pulse of the music gets lost (and the listener is confused).

Andrew Sega
I think [Britney Spears] is a perfect example of an artificial construct — someone with a decent voice and a very marketable image, that producers and business people turned into a pop star. Unfortunately, I think it took a toll on her, mentally, and I feel bad for the trouble that success has brought onto her. However, her music is pretty disposable, and she doesn't have the intelligence and cultural impact of someone like, say, Madonna.

Andrew Sega
Imagine presenting a Nirvana or BT track to someone from the 1850's, they would probably see it as noise and not much else. Society as a whole has a much more nuanced and wide view of what music can be now. It still usually contains various rhythmic, melodic, and vocal components, but they can be combined in so many interesting ways now.

Andrew Sega
If I was obsessed with making money off of my music, I wouldn't have released it for free on the internet for the last 5 years.

Andrew Sega
Every musician, I guess, wants to alter the world to his or her taste in some fashion... That's part of why I write music.

Andrew Sega
It's hard to quantify a 'top ten' list of songs for many reasons. I like many styles of music, and it's difficult to compare radically divergent types of music with each other.

Andrew Sega
A lot of my tracked music was written when I was very young, relatively speaking. I was very optimistic, I had finally discovered some sort of public musical outlet, it was generally a very happy time. So, the music of that time sort of reflects that, I think? By the time I started the Alpha Conspiracy project, I was older, a bit more sophisticated (and, well, cynical), and so the music got more complex.

Andrew Sega
We started out in the middle ages creating music which had certain desirable physical properties (for example, a major chord sounds "nice" because the frequencies are in integer ratios to each other). And then as society evolved, we created these emotional contexts for certain instruments and progressions. Major-chord arpeggios sound "happy", minor chords sound "sad", chromatic scales can sound "scary", et cetera. In the 20th century, film soundtracks reinforced this point as people associated certain kinds of music with certain visual and emotional experiences. It's a giant feedback loop, really; once you grow up in a given culture, it leaves this musical fingerprint on you which colors your experiences.

Andrew Sega
The problem these days is again just the sheer amount of music available, and that music isn't as important an experience in people's lives in the 21st century as it was previously.

Andrew Sega
Music is nothing but ratios and harmonic math, anyways.

Andrew Sega
The usual problem with progressive rock is that the band can get so wrapped up in their own fantasy land that their music becomes completely inaccessible. "Wanky", if you will.

Andrew Sega
If someone only ever listens to, say, Nickelback, their opinion [about music taste] is valid but largely meaningless since they don't bring any depth to the discussion :)

Andrew Sega
Well, when music "moves" someone, it doesn't necessarily have to be in a positive direction. Some people certainly get moved by darker music, and there are all sorts of emotions which music can create that are interesting — aggression, foreboding, anger, fear. Not everyone wants to feel happy all the time :)

Andrew Sega
I'd like to see people try to sample the sound less and try to sample the style a bit more. Some people see this sort of 'copying' as offensive... I'm inclined to think the opposite - all music is built on imitation and expansion.

Andrew Sega
You could argue that there's maybe some mathematical interest in a Bach fugue, say, but the only thing that music does really well is "move" people — make them feel something.

Andrew Sega
I have a love for cheesy music. I don't want to list any bands and embarrass myself ; D

Andrew Sega
There may not be a high-level purpose for humanity, but that doesn't mean we can't find inspiration in the world. I think there is a combination of psychological and environmental factors that combine to create various urges in humanity — most importantly the urge to create, to contribute something to the world, to express your personal worldview and see how the world responds. Art doesn't happen in a vacuum, and if it were only for personal gain then nobody would ever release music to the public. The process changes you, and also changes the world itself, creating ripples of inspiration which flow between the artist and the listener.

Andrew Sega
I think there are some objective [musical] qualities... how complex something is, how melodic, how diverse the tonality is, et cetera. But I could also make a piece of music that contains all of those and yet isn't "good" from a subjective viewpoint. For example, take Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", Beatles "Yesterday", and Underworld's "Born Slippy", and play them all on top of each other at the same time. Great music in their own right, but terrible sounding together.

Andrew Sega
Certainly there are songs out there that are massively popular, and you can use some reverse analysis to see how they're put together, but it's difficult to reliably engineer a "hit". Add to this the constantly swirling winds of cultural taste, and you can see that the music industry is more akin to playing the lottery than anything else. Having some talent or taste can give you a bit of an edge, but it's still a huge roulette wheel..

Andrew Sega
As with any collaboration, you have to find someone that's in your 'mode' of making music.

Andrew Sega