Ronnie James Dio Quotes

Sometimes I'll come up with a lick that I really love, and I'll try to put the right words to it for years. Suddenly something comes to me that works just right.

I usually write lyrics first, and then when I get home or close to any kind of instrument, I usually make a melody for those lyrics.

I usually start with a lyric or a melody and then build a song around that.

If I was talking about making a song special, I probably meant getting the lyrics and arrangement together, or getting some instrument that's going to tie the whole thing together. That can take months, or it can happen really fast.

I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last. Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me the music tells me what to talk about.

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

When I'm writing with John Leventhal, the music that he's written mostly comes first. And I'll write the lyrics and the melody.

I always start with writing vocal melodies before writing lyrics.

Sometimes I start with lyrics - rarely - but sometimes I might have an idea for some lyrics that I wanna say. I write them down and figure out how to use that in a melody to write a song.

If you wanna write a song, ask a guitar

I didn't know how write a song, (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, bridge, verse), etc., and I didn't know how to write lyrics, so that's when I thought, well, I don't have to write a song with all those verses and choruses or lyrics. I can just sing everything the way I want to. So I sang all the instruments with my voice and just went with it.

A song doesn't just come on. I've always had to tease it out, squeeze it out. 'No thesaurus can give you those words, no rhyming dictionary. They must happen out of you.

I write lyrics everyday as I go. I'm always taking notes in my phone whenever I am inspired by something. Most of my writing starts out as poetry before I put it into songs.

If I come across an issue, or something I feel strongly about, and I happen to think of a song that would go in that direction, then I do it. But that's not what I start out, necessarily, to do. Sometimes I may have an idea for a song - "Well, I'm going to write about a thing.

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 approach song writing three different ways. One way is where I write the initial melody and lyrics first and then take it in to the producer to collaborate. Another way is where the producer sends me his initial musical track ideas and then I write the lyrics and melody over his track. The third way is where we just jam out in the studio and see what we come up with.

I usually start with the words. The rhythm of the words gives me the rhythm of the song, and then I look for the musical highlights in it to carry it.

When I get an idea for a song it would gel in my mind for weeks or months, and then one day just like that, Ill write it.

What happens is, especially when I was writing for my band, Creedence, and it's the way I write now, I go into "guitar lick" mode. When I do, it sort of leads into a real song. I'd say to myself, your songwriting is coming up with a guitar lick, and the rest is easy!

When I write a song, it's all about the riff - the riff first, then the words come later.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

I tend to write at the piano, but usually the melody and lyrics come first. Like, I'll be in the shower, and I'll start singing, and the melody and the lyric will just come out. Then I'll quickly try to finish the shower, try to remember it, record it on my phone and save it for the studio.

I'm not a natural songwriter.

Once I've written a song, I sometimes refine them.

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.