Chuck Mangione Quotes

I don't have any particular methodology, to tell you the truth. 'Silver Blue' took exactly the amount of time to write that it takes to sing it, and 'Prisoner in Disguise' took about a year and a half. So you just never know.

I used to do three or four songs a day, just write them - boom, boom, boom, and done - because of how spontaneous I was.

When I'm writing a song, I'm just making stuff up as I go along.

I probably wrote three-quarters of the songs without an instrument in my hands.

I write a lot, and very often I write a couple of lines that are particularly revealing in some kind of way. And then as a few more lines get added and a piece gets added, eventually the song pretty much takes over and you can't really find a way to change those things.

The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation. I can't contrive a song.

I have a lyric journal that I write in a lot. When I'm going to play, I just sit down and have my books with me and my notes and tapes and whatever I need to refer to. I just play and try different things. It's a kind of discipline.

I can clear my mind, and lyrics just come out; it's very easy for me.

Sometimes it's really quick, and sometimes it's really long. There's no formula for writing songs.

After writing quite a few songs now, I have not a method but a way of being patient with a couple of verses or a certain set of chords. I can match them up quicker now than I used to. The one thing you do improve is songwriting.

The words that I'm most happy with are the ones that come from my subconscious rather than my conscious. They just feel right. I think that's the same with music, really. If you're doing an album, there's ten or eleven sets of lyrics, so you get to the point of inspiration ten or eleven times - it's difficult.

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

The songs will come as they come, and I'm excited because I haven't gotten to be really creative in a while. I'm excited to get back and do what I do and just write a song.

Writing songs has always been hard and easy. It's not always easy when you want it to be, and then sometimes it's just like turning on the faucet. That's just the nature of it.

I would write poems and think up melodies to them later.

I think that once you start writing songs, you start developing a library of ideas that you can go and take from, so it gets easier as you go.

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

I usually dream of melodies. When I wake up I have them in my head. I usually come up with things in the middle of the night because that's when my mind is the quietest. I always have my tape recorder, pen and pad by my bed just in case.

I write when I have to; I write when the song is done and I deal with the idea and I just go with it and I'll become what that song is all about until I have finished it. And when you do that, it makes the song more visual, it makes it more personal.

I can't just sit down and make a song in a day. It's only possible if you focus on the music and not the sound.

I love writing music, but it seems I'm always writing words, so I don't get much time to do it.

I've always tended to write songs prolifically.

When I do write, it happens really easily. I'll just kind of sing along to whatever I'm playing, then find a line to build off of, then sit down and write. When I do write, I take care of business!

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.

That's what I find with any good song, you just have to let it happen. Out of about twenty songs you might write, one of any significance. It might be thirty or forty, but I just keep churning them out and churning them out in hope that one of them will stick.