Johannes Brahms Quotes

When I listen to my favorite songwriters, they have such simple melodies and chords. I occasionally manage to stop at the right time, but all too often I keep on going until I have way too many notes and words. But that's just what I do.

It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table.

The best songwriting comes from being as creative as you can and editing it down to the good bits, essentially.

I really believe in melody.

It's not what you play but what you leave out that makes the difference.

I probably belong to a type of composer of songs who keeps thinking about melody... I am old fashioned.

Too many notes

As a songwriter, simplicity - what not to do, what not to play - can be the hardest thing to achieve.

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.

There is but one art, to omit.

I've been writing and composing songs since I was 5 years old.

Great melody over great riffs is, to me, the secret of it all.

So writing a song is much harder than doing a classical piece for me, because in a classical piece, I can just let the mood dictate what's going to happen.

Melodies are important. I always kind of pride myself on my melodies.

I can write music but I'm not much for words.

I'm not a person who writes really abstract things with oblique references. I look at abstraction like I look at condiments. Give me some Tabasco sauce, some ketchup, some mayonnaise. I love all of that. Put it on a trumpet. I've just got to have the ketchup and Tabasco sauce. That's my attitude about musical philosophy.

Writing a song is actually quite easy. Writing a good one is very, very difficult.

I don't like to write rhetorically or get on a soapbox. I try to make the stuff multi-layered, so that it always has a life outside its social context. I don't believe that you can tell people anything; you can only draw them in.

My songwriting process, and maybe loads of other people's, is just this sort of smashing together of emotions and stuff to make some music. It's kind of simple and really complex at the same time and, as you can see, incredibly hard to explain.

Composition gives proper meaning to the natural streams of sound that penetrate the world.

Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.

I liken movies to playing a piano: Sometimes you're playing the chords and different notes with unresolved cadences and playing all major chords that are all over the place, and you're enjoying yourself with a great, simple melody.

There are no rules to writing a song.

There's the conventional wisdom, of which I have none, where you get a record deal, you get a publicist, you get a campaign, and you do the tour, but none of that adds up to things like nuance and subtlety and dynamic.

I enjoy songwriting. It's slow-motion improvising.