Chris de Burgh Quotes

Composing music is hard work.

I think that the process of making music is a hard one to describe as well.

Writing music is not so much inspiration as hard work.

I really wanted to work hard on my lyrics.

Early in my songwriting career, when I was learning a lot about writing songs, I'd force myself to sit down until I came up with something.

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

Songwriting is a burst of inspiration and then a long bit of work and a tremendous bit of desperation.

After writing quite a few songs now, I have not a method but a way of being patient with a couple of verses or a certain set of chords. I can match them up quicker now than I used to. The one thing you do improve is songwriting.

I have to be inspired to write a song.

I'm not one of those guys who can just take a guitar into a room and come out with a song. I need all my instruments dotted around.

It doesn't necessarily take four years to write a good piece of music. It might take four hours. It just depends on when your inspiration comes.

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.

There's no secret, but inspiration has to find you working. And that's one of the key things that I've always remembered. And if I put my mind to it tonight, I think I could take a guitar, and by 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, something will have happened - I'll have had something to hang onto. But I think that's the key.

I don't write songs.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

We all love to sing, and when we sit down to write a song I think it kind of shows itself to us.

I can't just sit down and make a song in a day. It's only possible if you focus on the music and not the sound.

It's true when they say songwriting is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. In truth, what happens is... songs comes through you.

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.

Well mostly in song writing my experience is that there isn't so much inspiration as hard work. You sit there for hours, days and weeks with a guitar and piano until something good comes.

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

With music, it feels natural that, in my head, I can pull things apart and then put them back together very quickly.

Rap is something you can just throw on the skillet and fry up real quick. That's how it comes to me, my train of thought. It's like getting dressed - I don't have to sit down and stare at clothes, I just pick what I like and put it on. But rock, you gotta put it in the oven and let it bake.

There are no rules to writing a song.