Liz Phair Quotes

To me, the object of practicing is to allow you to play what you hear. But you're always hearing new things, so you never get to the end of it.

Most of the time, I write songs with the arrangements all at once, in my head. There's the producer side of me that's always thinking sounds, like, 'Wouldn't this be a great sound if it existed to put in front of a song, to open it up, and then, when it did its thing, something else would happen?

I've held onto little musical sketches that I thought could be useful, and the more time that I spend doing them for each film, then the more I have to draw on.

When I graduated high school, I bought a guitar and, at first, didn't really think I'd get into the songwriting thing as much as I did. But after learning a few songs of other people's to play on the guitar, I got bored with that and just started writing songs on my own, and that's kinda how it came about.

The bass line is the anchor for me. I started with the bass, and either doubled that and then added the harmonies, or sometimes added my own harmonies that I've always wanted to sing on the song. And then it just went on from there - singing violin parts and trumpet parts and just trying to emulate the sounds of the instruments.

I'm thinking about learning a few new things - like taking classical guitar lessons - and I'd like to bring what I learn into hard rock.

I prefer to think of myself as a musician who is still learning and trying to do something every time out.

You see, that is it with music, you never stop learning.

I'm a very textural composer. I care a lot about textures and gestures. Electronics add so much to that. It's like a flavor - it creates so much texture.

Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

When children start to speak they find their own voice by imitating the sounds around them. It would follow that bands do the same. Bands will find their own voice at some point.

My first album didn't come out until I was 27, which in pop years is late, you know. But when it came time to arrange it, I became a kid in a toy shop. I had a harp and a saxophone quartet and a symphony orchestra. I went berserk for a time.

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.

For me, making music is a continuous learning experience, and I think that it feeds itself.

You'd always see a lady or a little girl sitting at a piano. I decided I wanted to play something more unexpected, so that's when I got interested in learning to play the guitar.

But you can't extend, or go beyond any point musically, without the basic fundamentals.

I'm interested in creating a little sound world for songs, really crafting it, building it, and making it like a little doll's house with little things inside it, staircases and rooms and everything kind of relates to everything else. I've never seen it as drums, bass, guitar and vocals in very separate spaces.

I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

It's about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness - sonic goodies.

It's interesting to do other people's music - that's how I learned to play, by learning other people's songs. It's nice to delve into how other people got to where they are.

When I was young, I just sat down and started playing Chopsticks at the piano. I got so far and then lost interest. Eventually, I regained it and started writing songs.

My songs are more arrangements than they are songs.

What I liked about doing a soundtrack is that it's almost the opposite of any kind of normal recording that a band does, because it's very much a restricted, narrow... And I kind of like that, I find it exciting to work within these things.

I'll just start laying out the melody exactly where I want it to fall. And then I'll go back and fill it out. Whereas, in other pieces I'm really just going a couple bars at a time.