Thom Yorke tells young musicians to write their ideas down with a pen

Thom Yorke's first piece of advice for young musicians is to keep their ideas off their phones. He gave six such rules to Chris Gillett of the South China Morning Post in an interview published on Saturday 20 October, six days before his score for Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria comes out. Asked for advice, he warns that he tends to sound like one of his art-college tutors, then gives it anyway. Write down your ideas and review them with respect. It's better to use a pen. Phones place good ideas in a vortex.¹

Keep changing, he says, and build good work in layers until it survives the harshest scrutiny its maker can give it. Good music changes us, but it doesn't have to be “pretty”. 'Cuz we ain't pretty.¹

Suspiria is his first attempt at a whole score. Guadagnino gave him a great deal of direction, which Yorke found strangely freeing, since it took away his usual identity and way of working. Jonny Greenwood's advice was simple, chiefly to work away from the picture.

The work took more than a year, on and off. The strange thing was that when I reviewed the work at the end, there was an album in there.¹ He went back to his favourite Ennio Morricone soundtracks and found how simple their basic ideas were, and to the Krautrock of the 1970s, when the film is set.

He had long been wary of writing for an orchestra. Watching Jonny over the years become an expert in it meant I was reluctant to start myself, not least because I can't really read music.¹ Working with the London Contemporary Orchestra on Suspiria showed him it was no barrier, and he hopes to do it again.