It's writing songs within the structure of telling a story, so it becomes a platform for diverse songwriting, for a writing process that's broader than just figuring out a song. You're also dealing with always pushing the story forward, with casting the voices, with the orchestration, with the arrangements.

Alan Menken

Categorized in : Story You Song Writing

Collaboration is being open to each other's ideas and benefiting from each other's perspectives in an open way. Collaboration is all about rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and helping each other to constantly improve a piece. And, it's also about spurring each other on to doing really great, hard work - it's easier to do it in a collaboration than on your own.

Alan Menken

perspective hard-work ideas

If you write enough musicals you pretty much have a sense of where they should go, what you'll need, and when; how to pull people on that journey.

Alan Menken

journey writing people

Whether it's animated, whether it's live-action, whether it's Broadway, whether it's television, a musical is a musical is a musical. So, pretty much you approach the songs in pretty much the same way. The difference might be that in a film you have a close up. On stage you don't. So there are more songs on the stage because the songs are kind of the close up.

Alan Menken

musical kind song

The best parts about writing a show are [its] first, second and 10th anniversaries. Everything else is relative levels of hell.

Alan Menken

levels writing firsts

Having a tradition is a great thing to work within, and maybe today [it] is the only way to really land musically dramatic work.

Alan Menken

land today way

I don't write songs for myself anymore. I only write songs on assignment. It's purely a business, but it is still so important to me emotionally.

Alan Menken

important writing song

I've been very fortunate as a composer to be involved with projects that have really propelled my scores forward. I'm very proud of it.

Alan Menken

score projects proud

I've always juggled a lot of projects because at least half the projects you do get shelved. So you have to do a lot of things in order for things to move forward.

Alan Menken

half order moving

What brought me to Disney was the new regime, which is now the old regime, came over with Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and all these people really wanted to reinvigorate the animated musical, so they came to Howard Ashman and me. That was my entry into Disney.

Alan Menken

regimes musical people

Songs should have an infectious melody and rhythm.

Alan Menken

songs rhythm melody should

I see my songs and shows almost like a mosaic - part of a bigger picture.

Alan Menken

i-see picture see like

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.

Alan Menken

you music life world

I can't get into the underlying psyche of someone like Robin Williams, but he was at that level of fame where he was somewhat self-protective.

Alan Menken

get someone like fame

I have a team who I respect immensely, so if they have opinions, I'm interested in hearing them.

Alan Menken

opinions who respect team

When I was younger, I'd get very invested in things. It's a hard lesson to learn, but you have to know that if you want to find gold, you've got to love the process of digging.

Alan Menken

know you gold love

For a brief period, I had a gentleman's farm in Pennsylvania, but even then, I kept a place in New York.

Alan Menken

farm new place gentleman

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.

Alan Menken

kid always networking time

As a kid, I loved classical music. Composers like Beethoven were like rock stars to me. Then there were the real rock stars: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan.

Alan Menken

loved me music stars

There's plenty of examples of films where they're greenlit to move forward, and they want to get X actor. And they don't get X actor, so they go with Y, and it doesn't turn out to be as good of a movie as it should have been.

Alan Menken

forward good go want

Music can be witty, but it's not funny unless it's conceptually funny.

Alan Menken

unless music witty funny