Fred Frith Quotes

My focus on everything is songwriting, so I write all of my stuff by myself.

That is what intrigues me; songwriting and song structure and expression.

Usually one or two things happen: Either you have an idea straightaway - the sort of sound that you want or the instrumentation or one particular sound that you want to feature - or you don't.

Basically, I'm a melodic writer.

There's two facets to writing a song. There's you sitting in your room writing the sentiments of the song; the lyrics, the melody and the changes, and then there's the part where you go into the studio and you put clothing on it.

I love writing songs. I'm a songwriter.

I've always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks - you learn craft, you learn structure, all that - as you go.

There's two things that are tough when you're trying to be a songwriter: Number one is, how do I write a great song? The second thing is, how do I write a great song that's right for me?

You can write every song on an album in E and not hurt a thing.

When I learning to write songs, I never really was interested in the chorus.

I'm always writing music.

I usually start with a lyric or a melody and then build a song around that.

I write most of my own lyrics for my album and I am helping to produce some of the songs as well.

Yes, basically, like you said, I'll work out a chord pattern and work out the lyrics over that.

Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory.

I'm not one for walking the beaches humming a melody. I love the discipline of sitting in the studio, writing and listening. That is my domain.

We start a lot with melodies and instrumentation and trying to figure out good melodies for verses and choruses. We get to lyrics sometimes second, so we'll start humming a melody, finding something, and see where the music takes you as far as lyrics are and what you want to say and go from there.

I'm always writing songs, and I've got a bunch that I want to record.

We influence singing but never really songwriting.

Songwriting is something that's very daunting until you have your first successful song, I think.

I could tell it was a popular move as a writer to walk down the bass lines while you were writing a song.

A songwriter writes songs all the time, whereas just writing a song can be done by anyone, anytime.

Ever since Two Daughters I've been composing my own music.

I started trying to do my own music at home, and I was like, 'You know what, I can play the guitar, sort of. And I can do these things, sort of. And I can make these crazy noises on my computer, sort of. But I need a ridiculously good drummer. I need someone to help me with string arrangements.'

It seems when I put together records, as Henley used to say, they're just like movies. They should have action, tension, love scenes, places to relax.