Jonny Greenwood
Jonny Greenwood
Jonathan Richard Guy "Jonny" Greenwoodis an English musician and composer best known as the lead guitarist and keyboardist of the alternative rock band Radiohead. A multi-instrumentalist, Greenwood also plays instruments including the bass guitar, piano, viola, and drums, and is a prominent player of the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument. He works with electronic techniques such as programming, sampling and looping, and writes music software used by Radiohead. He has been named one of the greatest guitarists of all...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth5 November 1971
fact orchestras people realizing
What I really enjoy about writing for orchestras is realizing that - and it's kind of self-evident - but the fact that they are 48 individuals. It's not, you know, a preset on a keyboard. It's all these people who have opinions and who are making decisions about how to play.
annoys days doubt english-musician fate given green guitars mind miss people reverence shall songs worked
Right now my mind is on the people who stole our instruments,and, specifically, the person with my guitar, which will no doubt end its days having Green Day songs worked out on it. A better fate was deserved- and while the reverence given to guitars annoys me, I shall miss it.
bizarre future imagine involving modern music people playing taking
If I think about music in the future, I imagine it often as not involving electricity, in some dystopian, post-apocalyptic future. And that's what I get from Penderecki: people making music by taking these instruments out of boxes and playing them. That's a very bizarre and modern thing.
thinking mp3 people
People will have MP3s of every Miles Davis' record but never think of hearing any of them twice in a row - there's just too much to get through.
two long people
I was just very conscious that I could either bore people by having the music be similar for too long, or I could just wear them out and bore them in a different way by having it changing too much every minute or two minutes. So, there was that kind of balance to get right.
disappointment thinking people
I think It's a bit of a disappointment that a lot of people's Golden Age of music is still the '60s.
people drumming today
But I was in the Radiohead studio today and Phil was there drumming and Thom was there playing. We feel like we've only just stopped and already people are wanting us to carry on.
rocks dancing people
When people say you're doing something radical in rock or dance music, I'm not sure how special that is. What we do is so old-fashioned. It's like trying to do something innovative in tap-dancing.
cds format seen though
I've seen 13, 14-year-olds opening CDs as though they're records from the 1920s, going 'Look at this - there's a little book!'... That makes me think the format has probably had its day.
add along exit presented
Presented with a song like Exit Music, It's impossible to know what to add without actually making it worse. How can you play along when It's already there?
amazing cinema directors few minutes screen sitting strings three
There's nothing like sitting in a completely quiet room, and then the strings start up. It's like when you go to the cinema - the first two or three minutes of any film are amazing. Because the screen is so big. The scale. Directors can pretty much do anything for those first few minutes.
rhythms satisfying short term
I think rhythms can be more satisfying in the short term - like, more immediately. It can be kind of obsessively and compulsively rewarding.
arrive concert contact music orchestral sound speakers whenever
When it comes to orchestral music, whenever I see a concert with orchestra and strings, and I arrive and there are speakers up, my heart always sinks a little bit, and I think, 'It's going to be down to some sound guy's ideas.' Contact microphones on the violins. I'm a purist, I suppose.
coming saw speakers
When I saw the Penderecki concert in London, in '92 or '93, I thought there were speakers in the room. It was just strings. But I could hear these kind of buzzings and rumblings, and I was like, 'Where is this all coming from?' And that was just better, to my ears. Odder, stranger, more magical.