Jim Diamond Quotes

I've been writing and composing songs since I was 5 years old.

I can almost always write music; at any hour of the twenty-four, if I put pencil to paper, music comes.

For me, making music just starts with a simple melody, and lyrics will come sometime after that.

I've never written a song in my life. It's all a big hoax.

I've written my own music, and I play guitar.

I've always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I'll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first.

Every song has a bouquet, which is the music. If you can put words with something that is really apt, then you've done it.

I'm not musically inclined. It blows my mind that people can write music. I don't have that talent; I look up to the people that do.

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.

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

It's hard to decide how to match words to music. It's not like it's twice the work. It's always difficult for me to explain to the composer what I'm looking for. I'm not a professional; I lack even basic knowledge about writing music.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

I wasn't born with a natural talent for songwriting.

It's very demanding to make up your own music.

I'm a musical genius.

My earliest attempts at writing were when I was seven. I would sit at the piano and transcribe the songs I heard on the radio. I'd change little things in the music and write different lyrics.

I think to be a good songwriter, you have to be able to play an instrument.

Composing music is hard work.

We worked very hard to make the lyrics suit the music. I can't, like Elton John, for example, compose by lyrics. Elton has a great talent for that. Whatever you give him, including your questions, he composes in half an hour and makes a great song out of it.

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.

I always find that, when it comes to writing songs, if the melody and the chords are working, we're 90 per cent there.

I was writing tons of music in my spare time. I might be on location somewhere, and I'd go home and I'd have my guitar and my little keyboard or something and write music. Or if I was at home, on my piano. I've always been a late bloomer with a lot of things, just in general, so I think this was something that needed to come to fruition in this particular way.

The first thing that inspires any song is a chord progression. When I have one I really like, I get into the lyrics even more.

I started playing guitar before I can really remember, and I started writing really early, too.

I've actually had a melody on my guitar since the day I learned how to play it, back when I was 7. And for some reason I can't add lyrics to it.