A. R. Rahman Quotes

Music is something that takes you to a world which is very different from the world of hatred,jealousy, and all those negative emotions

I love the voice - it’s the most perfect instrument ever heard. It’s God given.

The best way would be education and kids and all that stuff and then education and working education comes through. Then I started a music school and the music school now teaches kids to play the violin and the viola.

Music knows no barrier of age or culture. It isn’t about being politically correct or even making a statement. Music is what appeals to the ears and touches your soul.

Sometimes I intentionally cut it off. I just want to be in silence, especially when I'm traveling. I watch movies without sound.

I am a big admirer of Sachin and his personality. He is a source of inspiration for the country and just looking at his photographs gives a lot of positive vibes.

There were basically three themes. One was the sun theme which is the guitar when he'd get sun on his leg and it comes again in the end. And there's of course the lullaby which Dido sang, "If I Rise." And then there's this driving guitar which is the motivation theme.

Your best success comes after your greatest disapponitment

I don't even know where mine [Oscar award] is. My mother has hidden it because everybody who comes in wants to take a photograph of it. So what she's done is she put it inside a suitcase somewhere.

I went to London to do the stuff. I was like "What am I going to do? What's going to happen?" But then once you start working, you forget all that and you start enjoying what you're doing. Once you enjoy the process, you know that people are going to do the same thing. If you don't enjoy it and just do it like a job, then it's going to be feel that way. That's my theory of doing a movie.

While other creators make a big show of their art Mani Sir makes it look as though anyone can do what he does.

When I initially read the script, it goes inside and comes out different things even without commenting on any stuff. And then, those pieces are taken out and then spread out through the movie.

I grew up on Bach and Beethoven and now I'm listening to more modern composers who I can't even name. But since I'm constantly doing music, it's difficult to have that quality time to listen to music and do classical stuff. That's the only reason I'm thinking of going on.

My first experience of that was with my first movie which I did in India. And it was so different from other people. I find that "Oh my God." Every time the music is slow I feel that people are going to get up and go out. You get this nervousness. But, to my surprise, people starting singing the song even before it came in. They started singing along a week later, after release, which was very cool.

I basically love classical music. I love a lot of musicians playing together and the whole culture of that whether it's Indian or it's Western. But in India, I think it's limited to filler music unfortunately. That's one thing I want to push in India where we have the infrastructure of an orchestra where you play Indian melodies with an orchestra and something different for a universal audience. It requires a lot of work from me.

How we approached this was I wanted this to be personal in a way. It's not a big, epic Hollywood score but really personal and intimate, and we thought guitar would be the perfect instrument for him because he's young and he has an undying spirit and all that stuff and we went on that feeling totally.

That's the sound design. I watched it sixty times because we were constantly tweaking. The same thing comes twice, right? Once it comes in the beginning when he's about to discover that he needs to come out and one is the dream where he's flattered (??) and then he comes out. The last one, instead of going bigger, we made it smaller. We removed elements and thinned it out. So it doesn't drive him. He drives the music rather than the other way around.

Your inner voice is the voice of divinity. To hear it, we need to be in solitude, even in crowded places.

We didn't want to do that. It would have been a beautiful moment in the movie but it would have brought the movie down. So Danny's vision was perfect I think when he wanted it to be driven at the same time having this new emotion about this boy coming as a hallucination or like a déjà vu and as the future kid.

The institution of marriage works better when there's a spiritual connection. If you're marrying just for the sake of the woman, then you may lose interest in each other very soon. When we marry in the interest of the Holy Spirit with the intention of serving God and humanity, then it gives a much larger perspective.

That was a very different emotion and I felt Dido's words would be good and I had a template with my voice in it. Then, when he heard it, he wanted both our voices together in it and that's the scene when he sees the boy and then he gets charged to go on that final cutting effort.

Certain things are done intentionally opposite - like there's no sound at the end or synthesizers or all that stuff. Anything that drowns the movie, no. Anything that makes you sit up and watch it, yes. So, some are expecting a very sad theme going on.

There is only one of the two that can reside in our hearts, GOD or ego. If GOD is in ego is out.

I played a couple of ideas and then had this unusual texture underneath which was like this little granulated kind of pipe organ almost like a scratchy record which he started [inaudible] brilliantly. "Oh I love that song." And when things go fine, it's good. So he started loving that song and that song was used quite a lot in the movie which is very granulated stuff on the guitar.

Music is language itself. It should not have any barriers of caste, creed, language or anything. Music is one, only cultures are different. Music is the language of languages. It is the ultimate mother of languages.

People Expect Something New From Me All The Time.And That's Good It Keeps Me On The Edge

The more I compose, the more I know that I don't know it all. I think it's a good way to start. If you think you know it all, the work becomes a repetition of what you've already done.

Since I worked with Danny Boyle before on Slumdog Millionaire, we have great success and everything. So, when I first got the script and the screenplay of Simon (Beaufoy) and I was reading it, even before the shoot, some kind of sounds came into my mind and I put some stuff [down] and sent it to Danny when he was cutting the movie.

I didn't see it coming at all. I just wanted to have this new experience with this team of Danny Boyle, Christian (Colson) and Simon (Beaufoy). It was like an excursion for me from my normal routine and the Indian movies I do and that helped.

The idea of music is to liberate the listener and lead him to a frame where he feels he is elevated.

There have been predictions that the world will come to an end on 21.12.12. But I look around me and I see so much scope for hope.

All my life I have had a choice of hate and love. I chose love and I am here

You can't be without passion. Passion means the possessiveness to be the best.

I like music that is able to stir my soul. My music is a spiritual exercise

I've been doing music for many years and after a point what is the motivation that drives you to compose and to do stuff? I did this song for the U.N., a fighting for poverty anthem. That's when I realized that I could do a foundation. And when I started the foundation, it was basically to fight poverty and to help - that kind of stuff.

In my case, dust has become gold: Today, I work with people I grew up admiring.

No regrets. There is no time for that. Regret is boring.

Success comes to those who dedicate everything to their passion in life. To be successful, it is also very important to be humble and never let fame or money travel to your head.

These are the Rad instruments that are dying out in India. So, it's going well and I think now we are increasing the number of kids we have taught and of course we are helping out with other things too. It's based in India now. [The idea is to] perfect it in one place and then we'll expand.

Be original and find your inner voice. The rest will follow.

I listen to everything. As I told you, sometimes I just want to shut off from music and be silent. Then I play a song and it's refreshing. It's almost like initializing yourself. Recently I was in South Africa doing a press day for my tour. I listened to this band called "Freshly Ground." They were doing a live gig there so that's the last thing I've heard.

Rather than making money I believe in making people happy, all other things are secondary. Money isn't important, creative satisfaction is

If a musician wants to blossom into a full-fledged person, it's not enough if he knows only classical music; nor it is enough if he's well-versed only in raagas and techniques. Instead, he should be a knowledgeable person interested in life and philosophy. In his personal life there should be, atleast in some corner of his heart, a tinge of lingering sorrow.

Because when you work with a different team, the expectations are different and then you deliver in a very different way. You look back at it and you're proud of yourself. And when the same people come in and you do the same thing, it's boring. You could re-envision it again and again but when the new chemistry of ideas comes in, something happens as a team.

It had a language. It's a very emotional language that only exists in India, that part of [inaudible] so we wanted to use that. I had two versions - one with my voice and one with the girl's voice. But he preferred the girl's voice and he preferred my voice with an [inaudible].

It's a very simple process. He [Danny Boyl] comes in the tube (subway) and then he sits with me for 3 hours every evening and then I work on something. Then later, if he likes something, I put it even more perfectly. I tweak stuff. So this happened for 3 or 4 weeks and the music was done.

My biggest dream to connect people through music has come true. In a world where there are enough reasons to separate us, the Oscars have unified us.

My list would be Russia, Morocco, Turkey, and South Africa I'm doing which is somewhere I've wanted to go, Australia, Japan maybe, and China, if I have the energy to go and play at all those places.