Melody Quotes - Page 29

• I was able to apply ukulele to whatever I'm trying to write. It's become part of songwriting for me, the knowledge I gained from hearing the melodies come out, and then applying that to guitar or vocals.

  Eddie Vedder

  Writing, Guitar, Ukulele

  Source: www.twofeetthick.com

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• I saw that something changed in terms of the way I approach writing. I don't know. Before, everything was just sort of pieced together; and more and more nowadays I'll have complete songs - chords, lyrics, a melody - and we'll apply to those songs what we feel is required. That has happened much more on Humbug album than on any of the others.

  Alex Turner

  Song, Writing, Together

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I don't believe in original melodies. There are only so many computations of eight notes.

  Mick Jagger

  Believe

  "New Again: The Rolling Stones". Interview with Andy Warhol, Amanda Duberman and Catherine Guinness, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 29, 1977.

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• I find it very difficult not to write in any sort of Sudanese style. With Sudanese music, there are very specific things that happen with the syncopation of the drums, melodies and stuff. And whenever I write, that's always the first thing that comes out, because I grew up listening to it. It's a part of me, so I try to bring that out in the music. I think that you have to be honest with what you do, and that's the most honest thing that I can do, is to write that way.

  Ahmed Gallab

  Writing, Thinking, Style

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Often people poopoo melody as if it's a cheap trick to make people like things, but in my experience it's the hardest part of the tune, to find something that doesn't immediately remind you of something that's happened before.

  Jarvis Cocker

  People

  Source: thequietus.com

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• The Armstrong record that I personally like the most, is a recording of a song by Harold Arlen called, "I Got a Right to Sing the Blues" . Most of Armstrong's solos tended to stick pretty close to the melody. But for some reason, it's like he let go of the tether and suddenly he's playing this beautiful high, almost abstract line that's floating above the beat. I compare it to the way that a 19th century operatic tenor might have sang an Aria because he's just completely let loose of the background and he's making this magic sort of flying above the staff.

  Terry Teachout

  Beautiful, Letting Go, Song

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Without you hearing a melody or music or anything like that, it would say something to you. So, that's what a song is to me. Now, you have a lot of songs that come out, and the beat carries them over there, because of the beat, and because of some other factors and so on and so forth. But I want mine to be a song, if you read it, it's going to mean something to you.

  Smokey Robinson

  Song, Mean

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I've been very lucky in that the studios really respect me and they give me all my creative freedom. But nevertheless, they are inputs, they have opinions. It's the same thing for me as if you're in a shower and you're coming up with a tune, with a melody, but there are 70 people trying to sing their own melody at the same time. So you have to focus and concentrate, and not lose the track of your melody.

  Alfonso Cuaron

  People, Track, Giving

  Source: ca.askmen.com

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• I really admire songwriters or any kind of writer, painter or artist that says, "I'm going to get up at 8 o'clock in the morning and spend this time to this time creating." I do that sometimes, but the songs I like the best come as gifts from somewhere. It's almost like you didn't do anything, like you can't take credit for it because you sat down and the melody and words came out.

  Langhorne Slim

  Song, Morning, Artist

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I want to sing using a throatsinging style, like for example kargyraa, but at the same time sing it like a normal way. Maybe I will try some opera. To sing a melody, and to sing not only Tuvan traditional melodies, but I would like to try Western classics, blues. I think Tuvan music and American blues are very close to each other.

  Albert Kuvezin

  Thinking, Style, Trying

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• When children listen to music, they don't just listen. They melt into the melody and flow with the rhythm. Something inside starts to unfold its wings - soon the child and the music are one.

  Michael Jackson

  Children, Wings, Flow

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• Many love music but for music's sake, Many because her touches can awake Thoughts that repose within the breast half-dead, And rise to follow where she loves to lead. What various feelings come from days gone by! What tears from far-off sources dim the eye! Few, when light fingers with sweet voices play, And melodies swell, pause, and melt away, Mind how at every touch, at every tone, A spark of life hath glistened and hath gone.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Life, Sweet, Eye

  Walter Savage Landor (1876). “Miscellaneous poems: Collection of 1846. Last fruit off an old tree. Dry sticks. Additional poems. Criticisms: Idyls of Theocritus. Poems of Catullus. Francesco Petrarca”, p.222

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• I still feel like if I can get a song to work with, say, a basic beat, a rhythm, some chord changes, and a melody, a vocal melody - if it works with that, then I feel it's written and there's something there.

  David Byrne

  Song, Beats, Chords

  Interview with Chris Dahlen, pitchfork.com. July 17, 2006.

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• You should listen to songs and listen to what works. Listen to why a song is a hit. Check it out-not to imitate it, but there are certain things that work-hooks and melodies. Hear what works through the ages.

  Diane Warren

  Song, Age, Hook

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• No one can explain how the notes of a Mozart melody, or the folds of a piece of Titian's drapery, produce their essential effects. If you do not feel it, no one can by reasoning make you feel it.

  John Ruskin

  Pieces, Essentials, Produce

  John Ruskin (1860). “Modern Painters ...: pt. 6. Of leaf beauty. pt. 7. Of cloud beauty. pt. 8-9. Of ideas of relation”, p.169

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• The doctor used to tell me that every person about to die becomes a music box playing the melody that best describes his life, his character, and his hopes. For some, it's a popular waltz; for others, a march.

  Patrick Modiano

  Character, Doctors, March

  Patrick Modiano (1971). “Night rounds”

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• When we listen to improvisational jazz, or solo classical violinists, the way they phrase and inflect melodies feels vocal, like they’re talking to us. When I was figuring out how to perform solo, I wanted to move back and forth between bass riffs, melody, and harmony, so I often used sounds instead of — or alongside — the words of a song. I found that if I sang a line using the consonants, vowels, shadings, and inflection we recognize as human language sounds, people responded as if I were talking to them.

  Bobby McFerrin

  Song, Moving, Talking

  "Sing Your Prayers: An Interview With Bobby McFerrin". Omega Institute Interview, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 11, 2012.

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• Well, the first thing I do is I try to listen to whatever rapping is already on the track. I listen for cadence and melody to see how the track's already been written, and to make sure that whatever flow or flows I decide to run with, or patterns or melodies that I decide to put into the song, that they're not already in there. Then I try to see if there's a different part of the subject matter that I can talk about.

  Bun B

  Running, Song, Rap

  Interview with Jon Caramanica, believermag.com. June 1, 2006.

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• I think the emotion that song carries makes it good. Because you have to produce around something - an emotional attachment and a feeling. The melody itself has a feeling in it. The keys, the tones, frequency, sonics, all of those have feelings in it. Like, it's the ghost within, the music itself. That's what makes the song even have a possibility of being great. The emotional connection. Because if you don't have that, I don't think you really have a song.

  The-Dream

  Song, Emotional, Thinking

  Source: www.gq.com

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• Something that distinguishes my solo work from normal rap production is that it has a lot of melody - it's not just cutting up a song and having someone rap over it.

  Girl Talk

  Song, Rap, Cutting

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• The advantage of the gypsy language, even though I don't understand it that much, the language is perfect melody. So if you propose the movie the way I do, then the language is just one part of the melody. Orchestrating all inside, and the language is following the meaning of what they say, and it's never the same as written.

  Emir Kusturica

  Perfect, Way, Gypsy

  "Momentum and Emotion, Emir Kusturica’s 'Black Cat, White Cat'". Interview with Anthony Kaufman, www.indiewire.com. September 09, 1999.

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• I feel pretty comfortable in a lot of different musical styles. I like rhythm, and I like melody and so forth.

  Colin Hay

  Musical, Style, Different

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• Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore be advised, let well alone and remember the old Italian proverb: Chi sa più, meno sa— Who knows most, knows least.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Music, Horse, Italian

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1961). “Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke: in Verbindung mit den Mozartstädten, Augsburg, Salzburg und Wien”

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• One nightingale in an interfluous wood Satiate the hungry dark with melody.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Dark, Woods, Hungry

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1874). “The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.226

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• Good melody is never out of fashion

  Robert Bridges

  Fashion

  Robert Bridges (1927). “Collected Essays, Papers, Etc”, Georg Olms Verlag

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