Washed Out Quotes

When it comes to making a song, whatever the beat tells me to do, I do.

I know melody. I know rhythm; I know bass guitar; I know the piano. I know everything about music that helps build the music that go along with creating the whole art form, you know what I'm saying?

Before you worry about what genre it is, about whether it's a loop or a drum, it's about what suits the song. It's using what's within your reach, but also reaching for everything you can. I don't know if I always get it right, because I don't know every sound yet.

When you produce an album, you're dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it.

I'm interested in creating a little sound world for songs, really crafting it, building it, and making it like a little doll's house with little things inside it, staircases and rooms and everything kind of relates to everything else. I've never seen it as drums, bass, guitar and vocals in very separate spaces.

Rap is something you can just throw on the skillet and fry up real quick. That's how it comes to me, my train of thought. It's like getting dressed - I don't have to sit down and stare at clothes, I just pick what I like and put it on. But rock, you gotta put it in the oven and let it bake.

It's about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness - sonic goodies.

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.

When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble.

There's always a group of songs that I'm working at. Some of them are 10 years old, and some of them are just a few weeks old. I'm always trying to adjust these songs to some position where I can bring them to completion.

The original 'Don't Let It Get to You' started with a beat. The drums came first. All the musical and lyrical elements were written over those drums.

When it comes to production and the overall sound, I don't really have a lot of intentions with it. I start off with melody and a lyrical idea, and then build off of that story.

Once I've got something that I feel is strong, if I get long enough to think about it, it'll turn into something. I'll start thinking about the drums - what the drums are doing, what the bass is doing. Then, if I can remember it by the time I get to a recording device, it'll turn into a song.

Most of the time, I write songs with the arrangements all at once, in my head. There's the producer side of me that's always thinking sounds, like, 'Wouldn't this be a great sound if it existed to put in front of a song, to open it up, and then, when it did its thing, something else would happen?

As a songwriter, I've always loved to tell stories. But in my band, it was always about what would make sense for a band to put out.

Just the instrumentation of the whole 'Beast Mode' made people open up and respect me in a whole other way. With Gucci, I don't use as many instruments. I don't play the piano as much because that's not really the style of music that me and Gucci have built.

I try to make explosive and catchy music, haha.

I started by producing, and the rapping came second to that, because I wanted to fill out the beat.

I'd say 99 per cent of the time I write on my own, just with my guitar, and then it's trying to figure out what it needs in a production sense.

The songs will come as they come, and I'm excited because I haven't gotten to be really creative in a while. I'm excited to get back and do what I do and just write a song.

'I Remember' was produced before the vocal. It's just another body of work in the long list of bodies of work.

I want to see the guitar in a non-linear sense that encompasses tones, arrangements, songwriting, audio production, and everything else - you have to do it all.

In recording, you're trying to make something work sonically - getting the right inflection on the right guitar sound - and maybe a part that would be musically great doesn't sound as cool. On paper, though, it's all stripped back. The musical idea is the one that wins.

I think that the process of making music is a hard one to describe as well.

When I walked into the studio, the chorus of 'Nobody Love' was already set. For me, the challenge was to make it have depth.