How do you know when a track is finished?
TL;DRHe says he simply knows by feeling when a track is finished, with colleagues never imposing length limits, and he only stops when he has nothing to add, apart from two missing harp moments in the Requiem.
Oh, I just know it. I can't explain why or how. No one tells me. That's a good thing: all the people I work with on the PU never set me a boundary. They just say, around this. They never say it has to be this, not one second more or 30 seconds less. I think music speaks just like when you're saying a sentence. I speak too much, because I'm better at writing music than doing this, as you've probably guessed. But in music I actually know when to start and when to stop. When the music comes to a conclusion, you know it's over, because there is nothing else to be added. And personally, I have to hear it a couple of times and feel, okay, that's what I want to say. It's a feeling. It's a great feeling.
That's your superpower then, because most artists I've encountered in life, what's the phrase? Art is never finished, it's only abandoned. You just come to a point where you have to stop.
No, no. I only stop when I really think it's done. There's only one piece, the Requiem, where I still have to make a revision, because there are two moments where I should have placed the harp playing and I never placed it. Just two moments. In 45 minutes, I have three seconds of music that is missing a harp. But apart from that, I hear it from start to end and I say, I have nothing to add. That's it.