Ken Hill Quotes

I don't write poetry and then strum some chords and then fit the words on top of the chords.

I always write lyrics first and the rhythm and the melody come from the lyrics. It always comes from the lyrics: words have rhythm and words have melody.

You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies.

I'm creating songs. I do it most of the time, in the car or in the house.

I began to write a kind of waltz and in a little more than an hour I had the theme written.

But mostly, I wrote songs and Viv wrote songs.

It's very rare - and it does happen on occasion - where I'll take a piece of lyric and I'll just sit down and purposefully craft that melody around that lyric because I think the lyric is the wellspring for the song, without question.

I never write from concept. The beat is the beginning, and then I fill in the rest of the song into what it should be.

I find it harder to write the lyrics afterwards because then you're just trying to fit them into something that's already there.

I really, really like writing songs.

Every song, the title dictates the architecture of the song.

It's never easy to write a song. It's the most difficult thing I do.

I love great lyrics, and I love the way it could shape a tune into a very unpredictable one, and I also like taking a great melody and putting lyrics into it.

I was never a 'sit down with a notepad and write lyrics' kind of person.

Then a friend of Jim's suggested we make a theme song to explain the story, and this is where the Mads came from. Josh and I wrote it into the theme song.

I record stuff all the time, like little vocal things. I write random things down... Sometimes I just get things stuck in my head and I record them, and that actually becomes a song quite a lot of the time.

I can't say that I'm always writing in my head but I do spend a lot of time in my head writing or coming up with ideas. And what I do usually is write the music and melody and then, you know, maybe the basic idea. But when I feel that I don't have a song or just say, God, please give me another song. And I just am quiet and it happens.

The melody will tell me what the song should be about, the tone of the song. That's when the intellect comes in. Because I have a list of possible titles and concepts, and I expand on that.

I have a lot of memos in my phone of songs; I've had dreams about a melody. It's always melody first as far as when stuff like that happens - I find that my melodic sense is my strongest asset as a songwriter.

I write lyrics based on music, on a musical flow, and what sounds good at the time.

That's pretty much how every song of mine works - I start with gibberish and melody and phrasing. I speak it naturally first. And then I think about lyrics that fit into that.

I've always written by myself. I've never been in a situation where the whole band sat in a room and wrote a song. I don't work that way.

It's been neat to find out different writing strategies. I've been in the room with so many different writers. Sometimes, you write with tracks, and other times, with acoustic guitars. That's been really a cool thing, because it brings out different lyrics with you.

As I got a little older, I discovered Lori McKenna and Patty Griffin and found out how many other tools we have as songwriters, that there's storytelling and there's ear candy, and that there is a place where they meet, too, and both of those women are really good at doing that.

Every song is a long process. First I have to write a story for it, and then to make it into a song, I have to make it short and then shorter - so it's not easy!