William Bolcom Quotes

I let the song come to me. Then that thing comes to you, and you just know what that thing is. Music isn't like a 9-to-5 job. You never know. It's just the most unpredictable thing.

I used to look at composing music as problem solving. But as I get older, it's not about problem solving anymore. There are no solutions, because there are no problems. You just turn the tap and it flows out.

Music has to be written while people are still excited about a particular melodic or rhythmic sequence. The idea doesn't come out the same if we're not really excited about it.

Sometimes a song can be born in few minutes, if the feeling is right, some other times it can take days.

We all love to sing, and when we sit down to write a song I think it kind of shows itself to us.

Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

You know, as you compose music, you're just off in your own world. You have no idea where reality is, so to have an idea of what people think is pretty hard.

With music, it feels natural that, in my head, I can pull things apart and then put them back together very quickly.

I can almost always write music; at any hour of the twenty-four, if I put pencil to paper, music comes.

I just start playing music and eventually I sing something, a line of a verse or a B section or a line of a chorus, and the line that I end up singing is related to the music I'm playing, if that makes any sense. And I go from there.

One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.

I stand firm behind the belief that, for me, songwriting isn't something that I do or command, it happens to me. I can either choose to stop and acknowledge it, or put it off and hope that it won't fade away. 'That Wasn't Me' is no exception - it came together more quickly than any other song I have ever constructed on my own.

Ultimately, at the end of it, it's just trying to get into that space where you feel like you're hitting the right thing and you're making music. And it feels intuitive rather than being counterintuitive.

There's usually a rhythm and a melody in my head, and that creates an emotional state.

Sometimes I'll come up with a lick that I really love, and I'll try to put the right words to it for years. Suddenly something comes to me that works just right.

Songwriting isn't always something that's directly proportionate to the experience.

I love making music. I love being involved in arranging music. It's very natural to know what I want to hear next and come up with ideas that are variations of what might be good.

It's fun and super exciting to see how other people work, how other people write music, and how other people put things together. To me, it's an endless learning process, and I love doing it because everybody works so completely differently.

I'm not the sort of chap who can sit down and write music. When it comes, I'm happy.

I've got so much material; like, it feels as if every day I'm coming up with so many riffs.

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

I've got so many melodies in my head.

I feel like there are things that inspire the music, and then there's the music itself. I don't feel like I always need to force them together.

I've never had trouble finding inspiration for new songs, no matter what I'm doing.