Ester Dean Quotes

It's no longer necessary to slave over the vocals. I don't sing the lyrics until I write them, and singing is the very last thing I do. I record the entire track, and then I worry about lyrics and vocals. The music will suggest where the words are going to a certain extent.

In the past, I've written my songs and then asked friends if they could record the vocals. I didn't want to use my own voice, because other people have much better voices. I was hearing the music with a voice that I don't have. It was a case of pulling whatever resources I had to get the sound I wanted, but that doesn't take anything away from the authorship. They are songs written by me that sound the way I want them to sound. Whether it's my voice or someone else's doesn't make a difference to the music.

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 don't choose the songs; the songs choose me.

When I'm recording, I usually just mumble and hum a melody and then fill the words in as I go.

A lot of my vocals were the first time I ever sang the song.

I always try, when I'm singing songs, to interpret them the way that I would've arranged them. I think about the melody first, and then I pull out my guitar and start singing it.

Sometimes, to be honest with you, our lyrics were written a day before the vocal had to be done.

Generally I'll keep 95% of what I sing on that first scratch vocal take. Sometimes that idea will ferment for a long time, and sometimes I"ll be close enough to my studio and have enough time (kind of rare these days) to go and work on the idea. Not every song is super easy though.

'Reign' - and this might sound cheesy, but it's a dream I had. I dreamt everything that happened in that song, woke up, and wrote the song.

I'm just writing less of my own music lately - I go in and out of phases a lot. Sometimes there are these accidents that just sort of happen, that are kind of waiting around the corner. I guess Modest Mouse was one of them.

Let Me Love You' is one of my favorite records from my catalogue. It's one of those songs that just happened magically.

After I wrote 'Sweet Summer Day,' Jihyo did the guide recording. We did that in our apartment, revising the lyrics together, allocating parts to members and discussing the song together.

If I'm recording a song, and it's kind of fuzzed out, but I've got this super candy melody, I feel nothing but freedom that I can just sing over the top, and it will be appreciated. It won't be like, 'What is he doing?'

I just can't sit down and write three verses and a chorus and a bridge anymore. It just don't find it inspiring.

The music comes first. Final lyrics are usually written very close to recording the vocals.

It was fun trying to use a few different voices for the vocal track on 'Country Heroes.'

It took me a long time to stumble upon a sound, and I figured out I wanted to kinda sing rapper's lyrics.

Sometimes the songs just come to me. I don't sit down to write like you'd sit down to make a pair of boots.

I like to record something pretty much as soon as I have an idea for a song, but I'm on so many buses, I have to record on my mobile.

The Migos, like anybody I ever been in the studio with, like an influence on my rap. I take this from him and him and him and, you know, put it with myself and make it work like that.

Writing music while caffeinated produces some interesting results. The stimulation basically amplifies my music-production-dependent bi-polarity.

I basically make my living writing songs, so I've been able to go around in my trailer. If I got tired of a place, I could move on and roam around. It's a nice environment for writing songs, as opposed to sitting at a recording studio console all day.

I used to record songs, like, play the beat from one phone and have another phone recording me and just rap. Moving from that to a studio was like, 'Damn, I never knew I could sound like this.' It was just magic.

It's never like, 'Now I'm going to sit down and write this or that kind of song.' The melodies may show up in the car, in the shower.