Britt Daniel Quotes

I feel my live shows are my music; everything blossoms from the live shows.

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

They just said, 'Roll the tape.' No rehearsal or nothing... Muddy [Waters] didn't come in and say 'I wanna rehearse.' He used to look at me and say 'Let's just play the blues. That's all you need to do.

I write anywhere. I'm always banging around on the dashboard. Whatever I'm doing. I can make music out of anything. Whenever a song hits me, I'll pick some sort of melody or rhythm out on it, and kind of enhance the song.

The way I work on music is that I go into my studio, and I start playing music, and I see what happens, and... I never think about it.

I just go in the studio and write on the spot and see what comes out.

Usually I write the songs at home and then I bring them in to the band; when we play them as a band, that's kinda how we figure out the feel of how they're going to be presented on the record or live.

If I get in the studio, it's very organic. I like to go off how I feel.

A song isn't finished until it's played live, and then it moves on.

When we were in the studio working stuff out, and even when we were on stage, the music was a priority.

It feels like when novelists say they find their characters are doing things they never thought they'd do, the material comes alive, and that's how I feel making music.

I still love playing live, and I love doing records, but writing songs is my main thing.

We'll go in one direction with one album, and then we like to do the opposite right away. But it's not like we ever have an idea before we start - that would be too artificial. It all starts from just sitting in a room and playing.

My formula is not thinking about what I'm doing; it's about still having fun and making music. I don't go into the studio with a thought pattern or certain goals in mind - sometimes I'll start with drums, other times I'll start with the piano - but it's all done spontaneously, so nothing is premeditated, and nothing takes a long time.

Songs seem to always spring from improvisation.

Freestyling helps me portray the emotion that I'm feeling right there instead of writing it at home and having to add to it.

A concert is my experimentation time. I practice playing something several different ways, but in a concert, inevitably I get more ideas onstage, in that combination of focus and adrenaline, than I could ever get in the practice room.

Some people can sit down and write a song, but they can't go on stage like I can.

Playing a song changes a song. Every night a song becomes something else on stage.

There are songs I really enjoy playing. I like playing "Say It" live because it's a long jam, kind of like shoegaze, so I do enjoy that.

I think more obvious to others, is that I'm most vulnerable on stage. Even though I know which songs I'm going to play, I try and keep it loose and base my stage time more on what the audience is requesting of me.

The idea of taking a song, envisioning the overall sound in my head and then bringing the arrangement to life in the studio...well, that gives me satisfaction like nothing else.

Blending is just like writing lyrics or finishing up the song, rearranging and arranging.

We worked the medley on side two of "Abbey Road" out carefully in advance. All of those mini songs were partly completed tunes; some were written while we were in India a year before. So there was just a bit of chorus here and a verse there. We welded them all together into a routine.

I have not made many conscious efforts to "re-imagine" songs. I just let them happen the way they're going to happen.