John Philip Sousa Quotes

We all love to sing, and when we sit down to write a song I think it kind of shows itself to us.

There's usually a rhythm and a melody in my head, and that creates an emotional state.

I'm not the sort of chap who can sit down and write music. When it comes, I'm happy.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

I can write music but I'm not much for words.

I didn't write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn't.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

I always enjoyed writing music; things pop into my head every day.

I've never had trouble finding inspiration for new songs, no matter what I'm doing.

It doesn't necessarily take four years to write a good piece of music. It might take four hours. It just depends on when your inspiration comes.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

When I was a kid, I wrote music - from the age of 11 until the age of 18.

Sometimes I feel like a melody doesn't have anything to do with me, but it's just something that comes, is accumulated from me playing on the piano, and then this little creature just appears.

People ask what was the first piece of music I wrote. There was no first piece.

My songwriting process, and maybe loads of other people's, is just this sort of smashing together of emotions and stuff to make some music. It's kind of simple and really complex at the same time and, as you can see, incredibly hard to explain.

I just start playing music and eventually I sing something, a line of a verse or a B section or a line of a chorus, and the line that I end up singing is related to the music I'm playing, if that makes any sense. And I go from there.

When you're playing such brilliant music every day, then the last thing you ever want to do is try to write something of your own that's crude and not as good.

Because if you've got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.

Ultimately, I'm a fan of music. I describe writing music sometimes as hieroglyphics, like, you know, excavating, gently brushing off these artifacts and discovering the song underneath it all. It seems as if it is already written in it.

I don't get my inspiration from a specific source. It's more like if you listen to a good tune, it gives me inspiration to write a better tune.

I just play, and I'm always trying to write songs.

I think its so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn't exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no ones ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips.

I started writing songs when I was eight.

Sometimes I'll come up with a lick that I really love, and I'll try to put the right words to it for years. Suddenly something comes to me that works just right.

I started trying to write songs when I was 8 or 9 years old.