“I was always a composer since I was a kid, but the BMI Workshop is whe...” — Alan Menken Quote

I was always a composer since I was a kid, but the BMI Workshop is where the networking really all stems from. So many writers and influences and ways of communicating all sprang out of the time I was a member of that workshop.

For a while now, I try to ignore the hoopla, because if you buy into that, you have to buy into the criticism. All you can do is put your work out there and move on; you just never know what will come.

Music is a gestalt. Songs are a life force and they have specific vocabulary to them. You hear a few notes, and they take you into a world of association.

Songs should have an infectious melody and rhythm and, I think, should elicit an emotion of happiness or of celebration or of sadness or of sorrow or of love or laughter, whatever.

Communicating with people was found to be like suffering judgment. In fact, it was almost impossible for me to dwell upon earthly matters, and equally impossible for me to bring the mind down to mundane thoughts and general conversations.

The events of my life are too unimportant, and have too little interest for any person not of my immediate family, to render them worth communicating or preserving.

It is interesting to come across people who feel that a ghost communicating via a spell-checker is less far-fetched than a software glitch.

Because of things like 'The X Factor' and 'Autotune', the real art of communicating a song is not treasured any more. But singing other people's songs can be an intensely personal experience. I want the songs to be vessels that people fill with their own imagination, the same way that I fill it with my thoughts and feelings.