R. Kelly Quotes

There's such a huge difference between a great arrangement of riffs and a song. Sometimes the two can be the same. But the difference is a song doesn't necessarily need a riff, whereas a riff doesn't necessarily mean you've got a good song on your hands.

I always try to get back to the original source of the song. It's not always there in the sheet music, which is sometimes just a sketchy blueprint of what the song is about.

You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies.

If I write a song, I'm gonna end up singing it. If I sing it, I gotta dance to it.

It's very hard to teach someone how to write a song if to begin with there's no creative crop to harvest.

Great melody over great riffs is, to me, the secret of it all.

Yes, basically, like you said, I'll work out a chord pattern and work out the lyrics over that.

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.

Lyrics are important, but it's hard, because English isn't my first language - although it feels like it is these days! I grew up with amazing melodies, so getting that right on a song has always been the key thing for me, but there's no reason why a great melody doesn't deserve great lyrics.

I don't sit down to write a song, per se.

One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there.

I write songs all the time in my room. I play them for my friends and family.

It took me a long time to learn how to write a good song.

I've always written songs since I was a kid - always.

I'm not technical. When I listen to music, I gravitate more toward the sonic aspect of it. The technical stuff of it, I get bored with it. These long solos? OK, already. You know your scales, big deal. I know it, too, but I don't want to do that.

When you sit down and write a song, you kind of have the idea for the song, and you sit there at the piano and you kinda just write it. And then of course later there's some dinking around with it and changing some stuff.

There are as many ways to write songs as there are songs.

I really, really like writing songs.

Music is wonderful. Especially if there's some kind of content to it.

It's never easy to write a song. It's the most difficult thing I do.

I try to focus on the melodies and try to make everything else minimal. The melody and the lyrics are most important to me.

When I hear the piano played in a compositional way, like in a songwriter's way in a compositional way, there's a certain arc to that that I love.

I don't think you ever get tired of the well-written, well-crafted songs.

I try to find nice chord changes, that's how I love to start, and then I start trying to knock it into a song, knock it into shape.

For me it always comes down to what is a good song and I'm very old fashioned in the way that I like to make songs that have something classic about them whether you can play them with an orchestra or an electro synthesizer or an acoustic guitar.