Geddy Lee Quotes

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.

To finish a song is the best feeling in the world.

Some of their best songs don't have bridges and choruses. So that made me think I should trust my instincts. My songs were okay, I figured. I didn't need to change anything.

Take '39 Steps'. When I finished writing it, I counted the number of measures in the composition. I always do this because I am interested in the length of a song. So I counted this one a couple of times because 39 is an unusual number of measures for a song.

I feel happy about the songs I've written. I'm a great lover of the craft of songwriting, and I sure admire it in other people when I see it - past and present. I feel comfortable with what I have accomplished. I feel happy to be able to work in that environment, and that I have a lot of songs left to be written, somewhere.

To record an album is cathartic, or at least it was with 'Belus,' but to make music is more fulfilling than anything else, I think.

As I got a little older, I discovered Lori McKenna and Patty Griffin and found out how many other tools we have as songwriters, that there's storytelling and there's ear candy, and that there is a place where they meet, too, and both of those women are really good at doing that.

I listen to everything and find parts about a song in the lyrics/melody/chords/production that I like and can be inspired by when I write my next song.

I never have a clear goal or a theme when it comes to writing an album.

For me, it's just more satisfying when you follow the rules rather than just make a bunch of sounds. The magic of just making noise in the studio goes away after a while.

Songs come to me and I hear them. At least in part, they are very complete; I hear the whole chorus, including the drum pattern, the base, the countermelody, the basic harmonic structure and the main thrust of the lyric.

I was obsessed with what a song was and what the possibilities of language in a song are.

In terms of creativity, both are equally satisfying. Music album is for yourself, where you compose songs and stuff like that, and in films, you have a story, characters, and songs penned by someone else.

I take enormous pleasure in seeing artists go out and sing my songs, or being in the corner of a festival, and everyone's singing along, and no one knows that you've written it.

After I wrote 'The Best Of Times' for my dad and after I completed the '12 Steps Suite' with Dream Theater, I very much felt like I had said everything I wanted to say lyrically.

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

The most immediately gratifying thing about my work is conducting a large orchestra. But the long range payoff is composing because you've written something and it's there forever.

Most of the parts are really gone over and over and over again with Tool. It's a very composed situation. We spend weeks if not months working on all those songs. There's not much room for improvisation.

When you sit down and there's nothing, and then you write a song and there's something, that's the most extraordinary feeling.

The way Beyonce works, the song is a jigsaw piece and then she will piece various elements.

The pre-chorus always flows and the chorus is always a little bit harder for me because I put pressure on myself. I didn't know that there was a proper way to do these things, so I just write what sounds good to me in my ears and then I hope to God that someone else likes it too.

'Sixth Street' is probably a new chapter for me. All of the songs were written in my apartment where I'm most comfortable, and at that point, I understood who I was and knew what I was feeling about life.

I have a hard time making a linear-idea song, because that's not the way my thoughts work.

I'm very grateful, but at the same time, I'm glad all this happened when I'm 36 instead of 26 because I - I'm just such a homebody, and I just want to write songs and make the best record that I can.

Every single song I write has to feel like it has a beginning, middle, and end, like a movie or a short story.