Stefon Harris Quotes

I never think about rhythm versus melody; I've always just played to what's in my head.

I agree totally with Metheny regarding the sound influencing the way you play.

Lena Dunham or Miranda July, those people are sort of thinking about their work in a slightly different way than I do, where their whole body is a seed of what they're creating. I can't imagine watching Miranda's movies with anybody else playing her role, she's so integral. But for me, it feels more like every story is really individual. If I thought of something else, or thought it should be my body representing it, I'd fold my body into it. But most of the time I'm writing to get something out of my body.

I still have a very nonintellectual, nonjudgmental relationship with melody and the music as I hear it all in my head.

I'm really good at melodic and sonic things, but I don't really think I have anything to say. But I really enjoy the puzzle-making of taking words and adding a melody to them.

All you gotta do is think of the song in your head. And it doesn't matter whether you can play it or not, you can get somebody to play it. With songs I've written, there's a song called "The Statue", which I can't play. There are songs that I've written that I've actually just hummed on - there's a song on one of the albums they have there on the Internet called "My Love Was True" and it's almost operatic. I can't play it. But I can sing it.

There is a formula that allows you to write a decent song. But a song like 'You're All I Need to Get By,' it just writes itself.

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 have to have a guitar sitting around. I sing in the shower. I sing around the house. The music comes secondary. The lyrics come first.

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

Whether it's string writing or whatever, I try to write for what each instrumentalist can do best.

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.

I really don't think of my work in terms of a genre. I think of it in terms of what I want to say, what I think is cool, and what I'm good at.

Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism.

To me, playing an instrument and singing, all of these different things are just as natural to me as rhyming.

You can time a part perfectly and play it badly. And some people have very individual offbeat timing, which is their own. It works simply because they are who they are.

The music is the main thing and it's just as easy to write acceptable words.

I look upon myself as a musical bricklayer with architectural aspirations.

If I write for myself, I write a song and I bring in the musicians that are best suited to play it. There's a freedom there.

I mean, if you decided to go out today and get you an instrument and do whatever it is that you do, no one can tell you how you're going to do it but when you do it.

If I was doing a musical, I would never listen to the cast album, because I wanted to do my version of something.

You don't play around with a good song. You try to just say it right in the proper place, and if you get the music and voice in tune, you'll be all right. That's always worked for me.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

I don't know what aids creativity. All I know is that it feels natural to hold a guitar in my hands and sing.

Just because you have developed the craft on your instrument doesn't mean that you don't have the ability to be expressive emotionally on that instrument, or vice versa.