Don Felder Quotes

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

My songwriting and my style became more complex as I listened, learned, borrowed and stole and put my music together.

I would start seeing, in just the sense I was saying now, the kind of record it was going to be and what the arrangement demands, and what my vocal part should be in the record. This was all emerging as the song was emerging.

And then, I was thinking of doing a record just like starting with voice, because I did this one song that was just kind of a cappella, and I did it for this art piece I did where people could come and play music to go with a voice.

It's the coolest part about writing music. I don't know how other people work, but so much is derived from some amalgamation of all these different songs that I love. That's why they jump all over the place.

I knew how to sing in choirs and sing in church, but I didn't know how to sing in a studio. That's what Darlene and the Blossoms taught me to do - to be a studio singer.

All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.

While most of the music I write is instrumental, I love to use the human voice as another instrument.

Of course, Paul McCartney's sound is different from mine, but it's the way you hear things, really.

When making the first album, I think I wrote a song about every six months. The first album was so much about the vocals carrying it.

If I improvise vocals at an early stage of the song, I just kind of listen to the roll, and then I kind of have a little vocal hook.

I think Sia is a pretty good reference for me because her way of 'singing and the way she composes the melodies and writes the lyrics is very similar to what I've always done.

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

We wrote the songs we wrote - we took from our own experiences, melded it together, and wrote what became 'Appetite For Destruction.'

My father Apresh Lahiri and mother Bansari Lahiri were great composers of their time.

I had this voice when I was in high school, except nobody thought much of it then. I developed it by imitating singers I admired - Alison Moyet, Boy George, later on Nina Simone.

I mean, I wouldn't sound very good next to Barbra Streisand, but I would still love to do a duet with her anyway. Maybe someone else can do the singing for me and I'll just do the lip syncing. How about that?

I do not like the raw sound of the human voice in unison unless it is under the discipline of music.

I was conscious of vocalists from an early age.

I kind of always thought that I had a good ear for melodies. I think in terms of melody. I can just be walking and I'll hear a melody.

2112' basically set the course for my musical career and how I approached Dream Theater.

Whenever I write anything, I do sing to it, to try and make sure it's interesting or compelling to sing to. I've gotten in the habit of sharing that with other, more charismatic vocalists.

I didn't just sit down and write 'Summer In Kingston' from scratch; it came about from a bunch of songs I already had.

My mom was obsessed with Joni Mitchell; I grew up listening to so much of her music. But it was never a prerogative to emulate her.

In the 1990s music was a beautiful collaborative process between the composer, lyricist and director. They would exchange ideas and magic used to happen.