Petra Haden Quotations

Old film-noir movies. There's something comforting about watching black-and-white movies, and hearing this kind of music just puts me in a fantasy world. It's a really great escape for me.

I like things that start depressing and dark and end up romantic, and thats what I really loved about King Kong.

That's what I love about those old movies - the music is like a constant companion. Even in scenes that aren't particularly dramatic, like a woman checking her watch, you hear the music as a comment on that action.

The bass line is the anchor for me. I started with the bass, and either doubled that and then added the harmonies, or sometimes added my own harmonies that I've always wanted to sing on the song. And then it just went on from there - singing violin parts and trumpet parts and just trying to emulate the sounds of the instruments.

I remember watching Looney Tunes cartoons and having the music stuck in my head.

I wish I finished music school, because then I feel like I could talk more about the dissonant notes.

I always related my favorite music to the movies.

'The Conversation' was a movie I saw probably for the first time in the early 2000s. I immediately loved the piano and just how simple it is.

When I was recording my first solo album 'Imaginaryland,' I was listening to a lot of movie scores.

I didn't know who Meredith Monk was, and I knew about Laurie Anderson but I didn't know her music that well.

When we were on breaks from recording and touring, I was kind of moping around, like not knowing what to do. It was hard to adjust back to normal life after being so busy.

I thought about what I wanted to do besides playing violin and singing backup in a band. Don't get me wrong, playing and singing in That Dog was really fun, but I wanted to work on other musical projects and sing more. So I started a vocal project, i.e. Imaginaryland.

I didn't know how write a song, (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, bridge, verse), etc., and I didn't know how to write lyrics, so that's when I thought, well, I don't have to write a song with all those verses and choruses or lyrics. I can just sing everything the way I want to. So I sang all the instruments with my voice and just went with it.

People are born with the knack to write poems and songs. I'm not a poet at all.

You have to be a poet to know how to write a song with lyrics.

I just recorded in studios, you know, people pressed the buttons for me. So I just started recording the bass lines and guitar parts with my voice, covering classical pieces, or just making up melodies so I could learn how to use it.

I love the Bach Prelude No. 2 in C Minor and had that stuck in my head: why don't I put this on Imaginaryland? So I brought it to my friend Tom Grimley who recorded That Dog's first record. I played him all my a cappella pieces, and he said, "P, you should really make a record, it would be great! You can record it at my studio and I'll put it out!"

I put out Imaginaryland, I heard a lot of, "Oh she's copying Laurie Anderson," and I was like, wait... but I don't know her music! Maybe - didn't she have a song called "Superman"?

I played violin from when I was about eight to thirteen, so I could read a little bit, but if you put a piece of music in front of me now, I would probably know the notes, but not the timing, how they're supposed to be played, and I just don't know how to read chords. If I'd stuck with it, I'd probably have more jobs.

Everyone knows about The Who, but I didn't. I knew the popular songs like "I Can See For Miles." So that was the first song I worked on because it was the catchiest and easiest.

People want to hear clean sounds; they don't want to hear coughing in the background, pages turning.

My grandparents on my mom's side played in a mandolin orchestra. So when I hear mandolins, I automatically think of them.

I've already done two cover albums. I don't know, maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to do another, but I just did the Led Zeppelin song for fun, and I thought I could do it kind of quick since songs that I love a lot I can do fast.

Harmony has always come very natural to us because we started singing harmony at an early age. We heard a lot of different music growing up.

Our dad played us a lot of old country songs by The Carter Family and he would sing along to it. I loved listening to him sing.

I never punched in anything when I recorded Imaginaryland. Where the title came from is a whole other story.

It's my favorite movie score and because I had such a crush on Christopher Reeve. The music made me love him even more. You know when you hear music in a movie and it makes you fall in love with the characters? That's what happened.

The first song I wrote was "Look Both Ways Before You Cross" from Imaginaryland. I started the song by singing a bass line, "hoo hoo hoo hoo."

Eventually I had so many little melodies and ideas that, you know, that they were all songs to me and I threw in a few cover songs like Enya's "Watermark," Bach, and my dad's song, "Song for the Whales."

My forte is playing along and singing along to music I love. I mean, who knows, maybe I could develop that knack or develop that ability to write, and I do actually co-write with people and friends, which is fun, too, because then I don't have to worry about writing lyrics, because for me writing lyrics is impossible.

The Conversation was a movie I saw probably for the first time in the early 2000s. I immediately loved the piano and just how simple it is.

I got a new 4-track cassette recorder a year or so after high school. For a while I would just stare at it thinking, how am I going to do this if I don't play guitar or keyboards? How am I going to write and record a song if I don't know how to play any instruments? I mean, I played the violin, but I didn't know anything about how to work a 4-track.