David Longstreth Quotes

Normally when I do an album, I have a concept behind it.

When I started making music I wanted it to have a narrative and be conceptual, but as time went on I thought it was probably more practical for a first album just to have good music.

I really love crafting albums and thinking of albums as a whole, not just individual songs or singles or just tracks, but a whole entire album.

That's one of the hardest parts of putting together an album - finding that concept, that unifying idea. Especially as I write mostly in instrumental music, the idea of having a central concept that unifies the music is very important to me.

Making an album is a long process, but it's a fun process.

I don't ever land on an album title until I know exactly what's going on the record, because you never know until it's all said and done.

We just wrote songs that seemed good to us. We wrote the album in like two weeks. We could have had more time, but we accomplished what we needed to in the two weeks.

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.

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

All my writing takes place during the recording of the master tapes. I never do have songs when I start up an album. I actually write them while I record.

All I'm really interested in musically is trying to make concept albums. Serving a larger sum than the parts.

I'm just thinking about the vision for how I want my music to go and what I want it to say. I'm always creating in a way, even if it's just thinking about it.

A strong concept is the most important thing in creating a record. When you can listen to it and see a whole movie in your head, that's what separates an instrumental album from a beat tape.

When I make albums, I do a lot of songwriting but not necessarily a whole album.

When I'm making a record, I'm trying to take people through different moods.

For every album we worked on, I brought in reels of tape of somewhere between fourteen and eighteen songs - some of them completed, with lyrics and melodies, some of them basic tracks. Things came out of those products. Like, for 'Hotel California', I think I had a reel with sixteen songs on it.

Making an album is always a puzzle: you start by seeing a lot of different pieces, and they all need to come together into one picture.

Sometimes albums can be quick, sometimes they take forever, and we're very good at taking forever.

I always want to put out an album when I know what it's going to be about. I don't want to throw in all these random songs and say, 'Okay, that's an album.'

For 'Twisted Fantasy,' I probably spent 180 days in the studio.

You have to have a plan. Everything has to be planned. For me, I start with the title of my album, before I even start with the songs. I write down different things that I want album to say, and then the songs come from the different words.

There are still songs that I'm writing. I like to write. I like to take a long time to do my songs, not even the actual writing process, but conceptualizing, getting into the songs. That's why I stopped doing mixtapes.

I like being in a recording studio. I like watching a song go from the simplicity of the original music.

I write most of my own lyrics for my album and I am helping to produce some of the songs as well.

I don't write all my stuff. Everybody always thinks that. But in just about every album I've ever had has been about 50-50 songs I've written or co-written and other people's songs.