Scott Storch Quotes

You have to know composition to be a good improviser.

I spent many years trying to write a lot like Ben Folds or John Lennon or Rivers Cuomo. I think that's healthy when you're learning to write and seeing how chords fit together and how songs take shape.

I'm a real musician's musician: I get really geeky on chords and arrangements.

When I picked up guitar, it wasn't like, 'OK, I'm going to be Kenny Chesney.' It was like, 'I want to play a chord,' and then it was like, 'I want to play another one, then play a song, then sing while playing the song.'

I'm enjoying doing research, to get better at the guitar, to get better at rhyming. That's an essential skill.

For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.

When I was first learning songs, I'd have a favorite song, and I'd take the chords and twist them around. I'd learn the chords and then play them backward. That was my first experimenting with writing a song.

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

I learned some chords and I started watching anybody I could, once I really got into it.

The first time I learned how to play, my guitar was out of tune. I didn't know it; I just started writing songs.

It's hard - some people get inspired by a feeling, but I'm mostly inspired by melodies.

A friend of mine once told me that I can't screw up when I play my own music. I also take voice lessons, play other peoples' songs out of music books, and occasionally figure out how to play other people's music from records. This keeps my ears, fingers, and mind working.

I've always been a fan of just writing songs and making music.

I think it's a bit of a myth that if you can read music you can write music. It doesn't work like that.

I am not musically educated yet. I don't read - I make my own language that works for myself. But I play by ear.

Yeah, I can read music and I know the names of chords.

I've started to look at guitar playing from more than just a standpoint of using certain modes and techniques.

There are only seven chords, and I believe every song has already been written.

I started out with piano when I was little. That, for songwriting, is my favorite instrument.

Reading music has opened up me up so much. I've been experimenting for so long and trying to make sense of things just from my ears. It takes forever. Now I can get where I want much quicker.

There's only seven chords, so you got to use the same ones over and over. It's all in what you do with them.

I compose melodies in my head and then interpret them musically with my guitar and keep them recorded. The guitar helps me to build unique chord structures on simple melodies.

All of my acoustic playing came from my songwriting. All of the chords I've learned and all of the voicings I play them in are a direct result of composing.

The first riff that I totally mastered was 'Come As You Are' by Nirvana. I remember sitting there, plunking along, I remember thinking 'How do they even do this?'

Once you've developed some technical facility on the guitar, the musical side (which entails theory, harmony, chord structure, ear training, sight-reading, composition and being able to hear chord progressions and licks) comes into play a lot more.