Rokia Traore Quotes

I've always really liked the rhythm element of songs.

Time is the main subject for any musicians, music writers, composers.

If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold.

What came to me as a revelation was the use of rhythm in developing an overall structure in music.

How to play music may be known. At the commencement of the piece, all the parts should sound together. As it proceeds, they should be in harmony while severally distinct and flowing without break, and thus on to the conclusion.

The first thing I do is lay out that melody and figure out how it has to hold here and then finish to land here, because you know in advance you're going to want the melody to catch four things in the action.

Some songs go super-quick; some take a really long time.

I'm a composer, and therefore I know when I've written a good tune. When you've written a good song is when you know that the lyric is completely coalesced with the song.

There are certain choices you make as a songwriter, based on vowel sounds and melody and chord changes.

I have to think in terms of musical tempo. Let's say someone comes into a room and slowly sits down or someone rushes into the room and rushes to sit down. That's how to work out the tempo of the music you produce.

It varies from song to song, but melody was always easy for me.

Songs are easy to remember because they have rhythm and music.

Pop is like a puzzle: to write a perfect pop song, you never know, and there's so much that can happen in a second with a song.

The only form of music is melody, without melody music is not feasible, and music and melody are quite inseparable.

Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm.

Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.

Unless you're singing something that's kind of in rhythm with the bass, the melodies, it's just difficult.

Melody is the single most important thing to any song, period. I don't care what anybody says, it trumps everything. Not because that's my opinion but because I think it's actually indisputable fact. The human brain retains melody easier than it retains words. It's that simple.

Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.

Well, rhythm is 90 percent of the interpretation.

I really believe in melody.

Music has a poetry of its own, and that poetry is called melody.

I like songs that have lots of different parts in them, an intro, an outro and a bridge.

Then certainly for a musician timing becomes something that is immediately accessible as a concept, because it's a necessity in ones everyday performance.

I guess I've become very accustomed to playing in the 7/4, which is something we've done quite a lot.