Melody Quotes - Page 16

• This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Peace, Littles, Flutes

  Rabindranath Tagore, William Radice (2011). “Gitanjali: Song Offerings”, p.7, Penguin Books India

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• Sometimes I just start humming something, find a melody I like a lot, and if it sticks around for a couple days, a few words will lock themselves into place. I might just get the first line. Then words just keep falling into the syllables. The choruses kind of write themselves and verses I have to work at a little bit.

  Jack Johnson

  Couple, Fall, Writing

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• Luckily, like for instance the song "Suicide Dream 1," I wrote it out of such an incredibly powerful state that the melody carries that affect. So when I produce that affect, that melody, with my body, I'm immediately thrown into it.

  How to Dress Well

  Suicide, Dream, Song

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I know I have a very unusual style of playing, where other more recognized and technically proficient players might look at me and wonder what the heck I'm doing. The purpose of my learning to play the way I do was more to accompany my singing. I figured out a style where I'm mentally playing the drums over a simple melody.

  Dave Matthews

  Simple, Player, Style

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• The melodies are always the most important part to me. I am pulled more to the groove than the chord progression. After you find the groove, you find the most simple chord progressions and then sit inside that groove.

  Dave Matthews

  Simple, Important, Progression

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• Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing. And you start talking yourself out of the bold melody and start wanting to arrange it in another key or something. Maybe I just never learned my harmony part, because what everybody says sounds odd to them sounds perfectly natural to me.

  Elvis Costello

  Writing, Keys, Talking

  Source: tomwaitsfan.com

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• The first time I started listening to Irish music, I had a very strong connection. Strangely enough, there's a great many Japanese melodies and vocal styles that sound very much like Hungarian music. You start seeing all these cross-references and comparative, independent musical cultures.

  Tom Waits

  Strong, Independent, Style

  Source: tomwaitsfan.com

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• I'm really good at melodic and sonic things, but I don't really think I have anything to say. But I really enjoy the puzzle-making of taking words and adding a melody to them.

  Meshell Ndegeocello

  Thinking, Enjoy, Puzzles

  Interview with Melissa Locker, www.believermag.com. September 2014.

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• All songs have those X factors. I couldn't even explain or describe what will grab me about them but it's all music that I'm usually listening to. I'm always looking there to hear new music and see what's going on so that's usually when I'll hear something and be like "Wow, that melody is really crazy.

  Hoodie Allen

  Song, Crazy, Listening

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• I am really obsessed with finding melodies that just hypnotize you and sink you into a song.

  Hoodie Allen

  Song, Obsessed, Findings

  Source: www.controltheriot.co.uk

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• Sometimes I write songs that just come out in a pop format because I grew up on melody and these amazing artists during the 80s. It's my tradition and it's something that I can't really control.

  Robyn

  Song, Writing, Artist

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• I don't have some songwriting formula that I kinda go by. Usually it just comes by way of inspiration. Sometimes I'm inspired by a melody first and sometimes I'm inspired by a lyric. Typically, I'm inspired by an idea for a lyric and then after we get the lyric going then we write a melody to it.

  Natalie Grant

  Inspiration, Writing, Ideas

  "Natalie Grant’s whirlwind success continues with 'Hurricane'". Interview with John W. Kennedy, www.beliefnet.com.

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• Preparing to improvise is at a level commensurate with mastering the structure in a European classical piece. Another way to define improvisation is spontaneous melody. In order to improvise, a player first needs to have memorized and analyzed the harmonic structure of so many pieces.

  Jimmy Heath

  Player, Order, Needs

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• Make your melodies simple enough so that the average person can hum them.

  Tom T. Hall

  Simple, Average, Enough

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• Music is the soundtrack to life. It plays the melody of our being.

  Michael Jackson

  Play, Soundtracks, Music Is

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• A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Sweet, Cheer, Men

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.1908, Delphi Classics

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• For the poets tell us, don't they, that the melodies they bring us are gathered from rills that run with honey, out of glens and gardens of the Muses, and they bring them as bees do honey, flying like the bees? And what they say is true, for a poet is a light and winged thing, and holy, and never able to compose until he has become inspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longer in him. So long as he has this in his possession, no man is able to make poetry or to chant in prophecy.

  Plato

  Inspirational, Running, Men

  Plato (1963). “The Collected Dialogues of Plato: Including The Letters”, Bollingen

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• For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexibleorder gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves.... I would like to hole them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stooping one, there would only remain in may hand a corrupt and languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even want that death: I know of few more bitter or intense impressions.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Music, Hands, Giving

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• I'm a very melody-driven writer and I have a rule that I don't write anything down because if I can't remember the melody than it wasn't worth remembering. So it's my way to test myself in the studio. When I was a kid I could sing pretty well so melody always made a lot of sense to me.

  Justin Timberlake

  Writing, Kids, Tests

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• I write anywhere. I'm always banging around on the dashboard. Whatever I'm doing. I can make music out of anything. Whenever a song hits me, I'll pick some sort of melody or rhythm out on it, and kind of enhance the song.

  Dolly Parton

  Song, Writing, Dashboards

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Lately I haven't been able to write for the guitar - it'll usually start out with a melody on the bass, and I'll layer vocals. I just can't really physically hear the guitar anymore, so I'll just go into GarageBand and play around with the keys. I'll sit on a melody or some lyrics for a really long time and just play with it.

  Sarah Jaffe

  Writing, Long, Really Long

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• What makes a great song - you dont put it into words. You feel it. The perfect lyric. The perfect melody. It makes you feel something.

  Diane Warren

  Song, Perfect, Feels

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• My plea therefore is this: Let us get our instruments tightly strung and our melodies sweetly sung. Let us not die with our music still in us. Let us rather use this precious mortal probation to move confidently and gloriously upward toward the eternal life which God our Father gives to those who keep his commandments.

  Spencer W. Kimball

  Father, Moving, Giving

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• Until I can visualise what the lyrics are about and see the story or whatever, I can't hear the melody.

  Elton John

  Stories, I Can

  "Mylo: Would you ever play Glastonbury? Elton: Oh no - I'm too like the Queen Mother". Interview with Myles 'Mylo' MacInnes, www.theguardian.com. February 3, 2005.

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• I am not dogging on non-melodic pop music because I love it, but I am saying that is why the timeless songs are still here. It's because of the melody. As far as what shouldn't be brought back, the high-waisted bikini bottoms.

  Julianne Hough

  Song, Bikinis, Timeless

  "Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta Talk ROCK OF AGES, the Cut Lap Dance Scene with Tom Cruise, and Recording Their Albums". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. June 11, 2012.

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