Kim Shattuck Quotes

I write while I'm walking, on little scraps of paper. If I have a melody going, I can feel it for days.

When I write the music for any of my songs, I write as a composer-lyricist in my head.

The creative process of composing music has always fascinated me.

I've always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I'll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first.

When I'm writing, I generally toy with an idea until it manifests itself - meaning a phrase or a tune comes into my head and eventually begins to jell. When something hits me, I write it down immediately. I don't wait, or it's gone.

But then you have to write a song, so at that point, I picked up the reins and started to write lyrics.

It's different for every song. But for 'Say Something,' I think it was Chad who had an idea on guitar, and I had an idea on piano for different songs, and we just married them together. We bounce things off each other constantly and kind of massage all these ideas into a three and a half minute pop song.

Even when I don't think I'm writing, I'm writing. There's some part of my brain geared toward making songs up, and I know it's collecting things and I know when I get a moment to be by myself, that's when they come out.

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 usually write my music on a piano, and I really enjoy performing that way, because that actually shows how the music was in my mind before it actually became an electronic song.

I'm always writing lyrics. I have so many lyrics on so many stray pieces of paper. Everywhere.

I have come up with very creative ideas that really didn't work with the song I was currently composing.

I always try to write a song, I never just want to write a record.

A lot of times, I don't feel responsible for the songs myself. But that's my job or my place in life: to keep my search and catch the ideas before they pass me by.

I can almost always write music; at any hour of the twenty-four, if I put pencil to paper, music comes.

I keep this crazy notebook of song ideas.

Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.

It's hard to decide how to match words to music. It's not like it's twice the work. It's always difficult for me to explain to the composer what I'm looking for. I'm not a professional; I lack even basic knowledge about writing music.

Once I come up with the concept, the rest of the song just comes.

For me, making music just starts with a simple melody, and lyrics will come sometime after that.

I love making music. I love being involved in arranging music. It's very natural to know what I want to hear next and come up with ideas that are variations of what might be good.

I write music visually.

Composing music is hard work.

I usually have an idea of how I want a song to sound, but I don't always know how to get there.

I don't really love to perform in music. Some people like it more, but it's not my thing so much, but just the writing, when you get the lyric, and the lyric just goes just the right way, or you find the right bridge that takes you to the solo, and those moments are tremendous, and it's difficult to portray.