David Byrne Quotes

As you know, there are certain languages that lend themselves very easily to vocal use.

Rhythm and sounds are born with syllables.

If you listen to people talk, when people actually talk, they talk in melodies. If they get angry, their voice rises, and it's more of a staccato thing. When they ask for something, they're real sweet. It's all music.

I love the musicality of English. French sounds flat. In English, you can play with pitch.

I can do accents really well.

Spoken language's elaborate rhythms and inflections convey more meaning per word than the printed word.

I've always felt that the quality of the voice is where the real content of a song lies. Words only suggest an experience, but the voice is that experience.

The art of utterance persuades initially by its music and its rhythm, before semiotic or personal characteristics come into play.

Singing in Hindi is nice but restrictive. Regional languages are more rhythmic, have a different tone and sound, making it more interesting.

A speech idiosyncrasy, in the same way as an air quote, is really justifiable only if it's employed very sparingly and if the user consciously intends to be using it.

The sounds and rhythms of words are really important to me.

There's so much you can do with laying words on a bed of music. You can completely change their meaning with the type of music or the way they're sung.

It is a very serious consideration for a lyricist to step in there and suggest the meaning to a song. The music is speaking for itself.

I actually hate lyrics, and I hate it when they're quoted in reviews. I don't think they matter that much; it's the sounds of words - not the words - that I look for.

Words have not only a definition... but also the felt quality of their own kind of sound.

I don't think the singers take it as seriously as we used to. The words, the meaning, the phrasing, the feeling of the song. They see the words, they know the tune and they just sing it.

Tone is everything.

One of the important things about familiar form and metricality is that it draws attention to the physical nature of language: the spell-binding nature of it and the ceremony of articulation.

English is like music. The English language is really fit for singing. The notes match the feelings, and it makes sense.

I'm trying to make the poems as musical as I can - from the inception. So that whether they're read on the page, or people read them aloud, or I read them aloud, the musicality will be kind of a given.

A voice and an accent are two very different things. The voice of a man is how he speaks from his heart, right in the middle of him... And then you stick an accent on top of that.

I come from a jazzy, acoustic, folky background. Everything has to work with melodies; the words have to have meaning.

You are an instrument if you understand your voice and how to use it - this sound, that sound and certain ranges and different pitch. Within that I try to find a rhythm and play the voice as if it was a horn.

I think moving from Ireland to Australia, you couldn't get a more different accent on the palate. The Irish accent is very muscular and involves a lot of tongue and cheek-muscle work, whereas the Australian accent is really flat; the palate is quite broad. They're at almost opposite ends of the scale, so I feel it was good training.

I've always really enjoyed sounds and alliteration and funny words and funny melodies.