Antonio Carlos Jobim Quotes

In order to actually have a touchscreen in front of me and somehow still be connected to nature, I needed to be able to incorporate natural elements into the song structures. Because that's always been my song-writing accompaniment: nature.

A song kind of comes out of anywhere. A song will come out of the sky, or an idea, or walking around, or playing with other guys.

When I first started fingerpicking, the first thing I learned was 'Don't Think Twice It's Alright' from Bob Dylan.

I think it's hard to really write a song that will educate someone because songs are meant to be ... you don't want to be too didactic in a song because it doesn't make for good music. And I think the role of songs can be to inspire people but there needs to education and prose to back that up.

As an artist, I always just want to grow as a songwriter. I listen to a lot of music. I listen to music all the time, whether it's hip-hop or soul or rock or whatever. I'm always listening to music and trying to learn from other songwriters and how they tap into certain emotions and communicate more clearly.

When I went travelling around Europe there was the Eurovision song contest on, and I got a bit dunk and we missed our train to Budapest the next day. Anyway, when I got back I kind of realised how many songs there were about people giving up things for somebody, so I thought I'd make a song about giving up things I don't have. These elaborate things that I don't have that I could give up to somebody, and I kind of thought there was kind of some sweet sentiment in that.

Well, it grow together. It's like, first time I try to write a song is the first time I try to play the guitar. And so I can write a song without the guitar. But it really grow together. I really like stay with my guitar. But it just happen, is the inspiration come through man. Because, I personally, it look like, could I write a whole heap a tune, it look like. But I pick special tune to write. Cause a man can think of plenty things. Yuh know wah ah mean.

I enjoy writing rhymes and sitting alone in a room listening to beats. It's pretty amazing.

Come away with me, he said, we will live on a desert island. I said, I am a desert island. It was not what he had in mind.

I remember going into a raggedy studio, still with my work uniform on. At the time, I was driving money trucks for Wells Fargo, so I had my gun and hat, which weighed me down in the heat. It was 97 degrees here in New York, and they had to turn the air conditioner off because it was too loud. So, I say, "Damn, it's hot in here!" That's how we came up with the song, "Damn, It's Hot." It was from our soul. We just got together, sang and made our own lyrics.

I tend to jot down music.

It's so easy to write songs about misery and hard times and sadness. It's much more difficult to write songs about happy and chirpy stuff.

I think pain is the best feeling for song writing. You can write good happy songs, but I think the kind of bruiting, depressing ones are more effective. They are easier to write when I am impassioned and angry. It is a good way to channel that negative energy.

We all listened to a lot of recorded music, especially American jazz, modern jazz, and that's where our studies were and our inspiration came from.

Whenever I'm done with an album cycle, I still wanna write music. If I'm bored when I'm at home, which never happens, my first instinct is to go to the piano and bang something out.

Waihi Beach. It's a lovely beach, and we're right on the shore and I get a lot of pleasure out of waking up in the morning and hearing the waves roll in.

When I used to write songs, especially on my own, it was just me and a guitar.

I was 21, and I was like, "Man, am I really gonna start over and try this whole thing over again? Do I want to start over and be in a rock band again and try to act like a 17-year-old for as long as I can?" Because that was what I was doing with Simon Dawes band. I decided that if I was going to go on playing music, I was going to try and work on it. So I got into Leonard Cohen and Will Oldham, guys that really inspired me not only as songwriters but also through their music as people, and that's kind of what the shift was for me.

Every person I've met has influenced my songs.

I didn't really want to write just lyrics, but I wanted to meet Leonard Bernstein. Music was always the first reason I was writing songs.

People are part of my music. A lot of my songs are the result of emotional experiences, sadness, pain, joy, and exultation in nature and sunshine and so on...like 'California Girls' which was a hymn to youth.

I want to do some different kind of songs, but say I want to do riffs, but I don't come up with any riffs that I really think are great. Then I can't do a riff album. I'm more of a song, melody person.

I've always got about four albums in my head.

I write all my own songs and they are just simple melodies with a lot of lyrics. They usually have to do with current events and what is going on in the news. You can call them topical songs, songs about the news, and then developing into more philosophical songs later.

The book of love has music in it In fact that's where music comes from Some of it is just transcendental Some of it is just really dumb