John Abercrombie Quotes

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.

I never edit the songs that come out. And they tend to come out as a whole. The closest thing I have ever done to editing them is just cutting out a verse, but never rewriting lyrics.

What came to me as a revelation was the use of rhythm in developing an overall structure in music.

Cage always wanted to know what my structure was, if I had one. I often did have some sense of the time structure. Then he'd make a different one for the music.

We always used to describe ourselves as an instrumental band. Basically, the music was always instrumentally based, so the songs always came later.

It varies from song to song, but melody was always easy for me.

The first thing that inspires any song is a chord progression. When I have one I really like, I get into the lyrics even more.

I played trumpet in the school bands. I learned things I liked to play on my trumpet, but I didn't learn why this note goes with this note and why it produces that sound. Or how to create tension in the composition.

Writing music is not so much inspiration as hard work.

I write in all keys. I've always written in all keys. I've probably written a lot of songs in A.

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

There's many, many ways to write a song. But generally, sitting down at a table and writing is not one of them.

I have come up with very creative ideas that really didn't work with the song I was currently composing.

Like, when I write a song, the song comes first before production. Everything is written on an acoustic guitar so you can strip away everything from it and have it be equally as entertaining and good without the bells and whistles.

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

It's hard to decide how to match words to music. It's not like it's twice the work. It's always difficult for me to explain to the composer what I'm looking for. I'm not a professional; I lack even basic knowledge about writing music.

For me, making music just starts with a simple melody, and lyrics will come sometime after that.

When you sample something, you're using the crutch of borrowing chords and melodies from a song that's already great, that's already stood the test of time, that's already special. When you're trying to do it all from scratch, you're writing something brand new that has to stand on its own.

The difficult thing about a pop record is that you're given guidelines: it has to have 3 choruses, and then it must be between 3 minutes fifteen seconds and three minutes forty-five seconds.

The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes.

The mathematics of rhythm are universal. They don't belong to any particular culture.

Many, many composers have only found their way to a certain form, through familiarizing themselves with texts.

I push myself in a lot of aspects when I write a song. I write a piece and where most people would stop and say, 'Oh, that's the hook right there,' I'll move that to the first four bars of the verse and do a new hook.

If I get an idea for a song, I have a melody for it. I'm a musician first. I'm not limited by the fretboard.

The first thing I do is lay out that melody and figure out how it has to hold here and then finish to land here, because you know in advance you're going to want the melody to catch four things in the action.