Seinabo Sey Quotes

Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.

I need a big picture. I can't just do a collection of songs; that doesn't work for me.

I wanted to make an album that plays from the top to bottom and feels together and complete. That's just something that felt important.

I wanted 'Imitations' to be a fully realized record from start to finish, with a cohesive sound and a sequence that took you from one song to the other, just like I would with a record of original stuff.

I've waited for the day my debut album is released my entire life, so naturally I've designed it to be listened to from start to finish - so every song flows into each other in a way that tells a sonic story.

A Cat Stevens record isn't just Cat Stevens' ideas. It's Cat Stevens and all the musicians who play with Cat Stevens, right?

My next record I really just want it to be a collection of great songs, classic songs in a way.

A song doesn't happen as a whole verse; it happens linearly, line by line, almost word by word, phrase by phrase. And if each phrase, each line, has a proper emotional feel and connects to the line before it and the line after it, the song will be doing what it should be doing.

When you're in a band and there's five of you, you have to accommodate five people in every song.

I never have used any other artist as a model for a sound or a song. It always has to come from an emotion, and capturing the essence of that emotion in a song.

I've never wanted to name an album from a song title if I could avoid it because I like it to be a body of work.

Like, when I write a song, the song comes first before production. Everything is written on an acoustic guitar so you can strip away everything from it and have it be equally as entertaining and good without the bells and whistles.

I like to oversee what I do, so I have a hand in writing my songs. I also have people there to help me with my vision.

I had to do this very aggressive, big score in a very short time, and knowing that in the beginning, middle, and end would be this very, very famous theme, but I still had to weave a score around it and make it work as a score was really challenging.

Ideas are really what interest me in producing a band, if I can bring something productive to the project.

Of course the playing is important but writing and the establishing of what you are going for is prime too.

I was never just a 'fill in 16 bars on a beat' rapper. I was making real songs from the jump.

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.

I can play piano, and I write everything on piano, but I don't really feel like a piano player, necessarily.

I've written more songs for this record than I ever have in the past so I'm trying to give it a lot of special attention to be sure my ideas really get translated right.

When I write a song and come up with an arrangement and a vocal part, it's always a challenge trying to find a singer who can interpret it sort of the way that I hear it, and it's a very difficult thing to do. I mean, singing is like playing an instrument - everybody does it a little bit different - singing maybe even more so.

I'm a composer, and therefore I know when I've written a good tune. When you've written a good song is when you know that the lyric is completely coalesced with the song.

I am just trying to do a song the best possible way I can.

It's easy to make an album full of great songs. But I want people to go for the ride. The songs have to make sense together.

I just hear a beat and start mumbling words. I just hear sounds and rhythms, and it just kind of comes intuitively. Formatting a song, figuring out a flow, how I respond to the beat.