Zaytoven Quotes

Any talk of 'craft' makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it's like the first time. There's no craft in that.

Most songs I write are spur-of-the-moment-type things. I have to be spontaneous. If not, songwriting can bore me. There is no pre-design or idea of what I am going to do when I go into the studio. It's all like that for me. I could go in and write two or three songs in an eight-hour session. You can't over-think songs. You just can't.

The way I work on music is that I go into my studio, and I start playing music, and I see what happens, and... I never think about it.

I'm just having fun. I go in the studio, and I have no idea what I'm going to do, what I'm going to make. I'm going to make whatever I feel like making.

So the actual riffing came out of us just sitting there and doing it the way I think some people think we really did it, which is all spontaneously, and it really was.

For me, something will come in my head and I'll either end up calling my cell phone to record it, or I'll just pick my guitar up and see what comes out. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't. So there's really no set method behind it.

I like people that can strap on a guitar and don't sweat the fact that you have to come up with a song in an hour. I want to work with someone who won't feel like they have to play along with Jason Molina. I want them to just have the confidence.

I don't sit down and say I'm going to write a song about this or that. They are never mapped out.

With Zeppelin, I tried to play something different every night in my solos. I'd play for 20 minutes but the longest ever was 30 minutes. It's a long time, but whenI was playing it seemed to fly by.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don't really know what we're doing and when we do, it doesn't seem to help.

When I'm writing a song, I'm just making stuff up as I go along.

I tried several times to get the song right. The tune and the chords that I started with, there really wasn't anywhere else it could go. I stopped fighting it and let it take me away.

I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

When I start writing, I'll have a vague concept or I'll just have a title, and the song just goes on its own direction. Usually it goes in many directions within each song. They get really convoluted sometimes.

With solos, I don't like to be too prepared going in - I like to surprise myself.

We have no general conceptual thrust for the band, other than trying to make music that keeps our interest. When things are novel, they are probably things we have discovered by accident or investigation rather than by design.

I guess, like, the whole thing with music is - you're a little bit in control but not fully in control. Which is kind of the fun of it.

I've never been one of those guys who storyboards every frame, because that would take away some of the mystery and some of the fun.

When I put my brush to canvas, I never know what I'm going to paint. It's like when you're walking down the street with your hands in your pockets, humming a tune, you don't know what you'll be humming five minutes from now.

The way I did the first album... the way I wrote 'Church'... was just to trust my instincts with the music and let it kind of do what it does.

It struck me that it would be fun to just play stuff with Hauschka. Not even have a project in mind, but just get together and make up some music and see what came out.

In the performance sense, I find that interpretation is improvisatory in nature. You can go anywhere with an interpretation on any given day.

When I'm at home creating music, I usually wind up laughing. It's always, like, funny - like, what the hell did I just write?

Maybe you have a particular type of sound you want to go for, but if you really want to be original, there's no real recipe for that. For me it's just about letting it come to you... if you can let your head clear out, then almost anything is available.