Songwriting Quotes - Page 28

• Every sentence has its drumbeat. rhythm is one of the most powerful dimensions of language: it separates tribes, united families, soothes children, and shocks us into new awarenesses. Every good writer, marching to his or her own drumbeat, marks out a vibrational field as home territory. The cadences of our sentences carry echos of ancestry and influence as surely as the double helix that orchstrates the life of the body.

  Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

  Children, Powerful, Home

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• I've done so much songwriting and I know how to do it.

  Ester Dean

  Done, Know How, Knows

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I'm an untrained musician. Untrained musicians don't really have any music theory, they don't have a lot of rules. We break the rules, but it's mostly because we don't know what the rules are. It's easy for us to go to certain places, so I'm not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style.

  Black Francis

  People, Style, Musician

  Interview with Scott Gordon, www.avclub.com. October 19, 2006.

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• I attended a post-college program in L.A. for Music Business and Production. Took several courses involving Music Production, Arrangement, and Songwriting.

  Adam Kluger

  College, Program, Music Business

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• If you are in NYC and you only do one thing culturally go and see Carol Lipnik at Pangea. If you love music and appreciate great songwriting and singing, if you came to NYC to experience magical happenings in tiny rooms that could never happen anyplace else in the world, if you dreamed of intimate nights surrounded by smart, talented, interesting people, this is what you're here for.
  Now DON'T MISS IT!!!!

  Justin Vivian Bond

  Smart, Night, Nyc

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• The songwriting style, to me, is superior. There was a certain amount of joy in it, no matter how sad the song is. You get joy in listening to these Buddy Holly or Roy Orbison sad lyrics. I'm attracted to songs that have balance between the darks and the lights and giving them all equal opportunity.

  M. Ward

  Song, Opportunity, Light

  Interview with Bob Boilen, www.npr.org. November 17, 2006.

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• If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It's a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

  Bono

  Music, Song, Inspire

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• (Songwriting) It's a gift. It all comes from somewhere. I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn't lived long enough to experience.

  Willie Nelson

  Writing, Eight, Years

  "Willie Nelson: 'If We Made Marijuana Legal, We'd Save a Whole Lotta Money and Lives'" by Michael Hann, www.theguardian.com. May 17, 2012.

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• I could send myself right back to the day that I wrote "Angel Of The Morning," how it felt. I had a buzz through me that morning that was so powerful. I knew I had done something that meant something, because of that feeling. It wasn't a question of whether other people liked it ... I loved it. To me, it had to be one of the most important love stories of all time.

  Chip Taylor

  Morning, Powerful, Writing

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• I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. ... I'm probably writing music now for the same reason as I started writing songs when I was 14-to meet women. ... If you make music for the human needs you have within yourself, then you do it for all humans who need the same things. You enrich humanity with the profound expression of these feelings. ... My songs are like my kids.

  Billy Joel

  Song, Kids, Writing

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• She knew the intensity of adolescence, and knew no cure for it except growing up. And then one has age and experience, and mourns the loss of intensity. Maybe it's why musicians and mathmaticians are said to peak young-poetry needs the fire of an unbounded universe.

  Sara Paretsky

  Growing Up, Writing, Loss

  Sara Paretsky (2008). “Bleeding Kansas”, p.240, Penguin

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• It might be a meaningless moment, but those sparks that ignite the song.... It's mystical maybe, those magic moments. And to make music for a living, to perform these songs over and over, you have to safeguard those sparks. If you can do that, they'll last a lot longer.

  M. Ward

  Song, Writing, Magic Moments

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• When I write a song today, basically it goes on the stage tomorrow. That's the way it works. You cannont interrupt your consciousness; it all comes from the subconscious, it can happen anywhere. It could be in a telephone booth.

  Richie Havens

  Song, Writing, Goes On

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• There are no limitations with a song. To me a song is a little piece of art. It can be whatever you like it to be. You can write the simplest song, and that's lovely, or you can just write a song that is abstract art. ... A lot of my songs are very serious, I'm like dead serious about certain things and I feel that I'm writing about the world, through my own eyes. ... I have a love for simple basic song structure, although sometimes you'd never know it. ... Most of the songs I wrote at night. I would just wake in the middle of the night. That's when I found the space to write.

  Laura Nyro

  Song, Art, Eye

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• When I was young I wanted to make films and then I got into folk music when I was about 12, and started going to this folk club in Auckland. My dad [Barry Andrews] was in punk and post-punk bands, so I guess it was a side of music I hadn't really listened to before - the really narrative form of songwriting.

  Finn Andrews

  Dad, Band, Clubs

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Usually the things that happen in my life are an easy trigger for songwriting.

  Coeur de pirate

  Easy, Triggers, Happens

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• The jam stuff doesn't appeal to me in general. My newfound love for the Dead came from Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia's songwriting, not the elaborate guitar solos. I'm a song person. Once it starts to break out of that structure and become loopy, it's uninteresting to me.

  Colin Meloy

  Song, Guitar, Stuff

  "The Decemberists' Colin Meloy". Interview with Larry Fitzmaurice, pitchfork.com. February 14, 2011.

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• My songwriting and overall approach to music go beyond just good singing and strong musicality - I want people, now more so than ever, to feel something and be moved somehow by the content I create.

  Rayvon Owen

  Strong, People, Singing

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• When we get together to rehearse, we could write music together all day long - GOOD music.

  Anthony Kiedis

  Writing, Long, Together

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• Living in war, and being a wartime band, I don't think there's any way that can't somehow influence the songwriting.

  Colin Meloy

  War, Thinking, Band

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• People think of songwriting as a very personal thing: A guy gets up there with an acoustic guitar and he sings his heart out, bares his soul.

  Craig Finn

  Heart, Thinking, Guitar

  "The Hold Steady". Interview with Pitchfork, pitchfork.com. May 16, 2005.

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• As I've grown older I've been more influenced by more meandering styles of guitar playing, whether it's Celtic or Ethiopian folk music or some kind of noisier jazz like Sonny Sharrock. In terms of songwriting, I don't know that I could even pin it down.

  Ted Leo

  Guitar, Style, Jazz

  "Ted Leo and Ben Arthur Discuss Carly Simon, Joyce Carl Oates, and the Touring Grind". Interview with Ben Arthur, logger.believermag.com. June 26, 2016.

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• I usually like to make really dramatic songs that are dynamic from part to part - a lot of jumping from really quiet to really loud.

  Mike Shinoda

  Song, Jumping, Quiet

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• I think MTV put a huge dent in the songwriting craft.

  Christopher Cross

  Thinking, Mtv, Crafts

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• I'm looking for anything interesting in the guitar playing, songwriting, artwork, and production. If you look at the stack of CDs on my desk and in my car, you'll find a very wide range of music under the umbrella of metal.

  David Pajo

  Guitar, Cds, Interesting

  "Dead Child". Interview with Stephen M. Deusner, pitchfork.com. April 22, 2008.

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