Kenneth Edmonds Quotes

'My Life' is not an autobiography. It's just music.

I think that a song, when it works, never mind a piece of long form music, even a song is something that speaks to itself but has a language all of its own, ideally.

I want my music to do the explaining.

I really like the art of music, the way that you can express yourself through music.

For me, how I feel about what I wrote down turns into a song.

All music has to speak in some form or other.

In songwriting, I needed language. And I always believed in singing about what I do.

Most of the songs I wrote are personal.

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.

There's not only emotion in the way you sing but also in what you sing. That way I can compensate it.

As long as I can say what it is that I need to say, then I'll fit whatever I'm trying to say around a melody.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It's always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

I'm the only instrument that's got the words, so I've got to be able to get that across.

That's what we get to do as songwriters, right? You get to explore stuff.

I like to make music because I've been making music since I was 7. I can get across the things that I want to say in my music so that I don't have to say anything. I don't have to speak out about the things I believe; I can say them in my music.

I am an open book through the songwriting.

Writing music is something very natural... this is the way to communicate with other people.

I feel as though I came to music with something to say. It wasn't like that when I was younger. I didn't have the ability to articulate what it was I wanted to say.

The guitar speaks for me and it says things - hopefully - for everybody that I play for.

I have never composed a song keeping in mind that I should touch any social issues.

All my songs encapsulate a particular emotion.

Songwriting has become such a big part of what I do that emotions and the melodies that accompany them blur into one.

Music reaches people in a way that simple spoken words just can't.

The thing that makes me want to write a piece of music is having something to talk about, you know? Something I want to get across. Because I'm a composer, music is my first language, and that's what I reach for when I want to convey something.

Freedom is the thing that has attracted me most to jazz. Within improvisation, you're really able to express something that maybe I'm not so adept at expressing via language. So I develop a language through the instrument to tell stories. So it's kind of this freedom of thought and freedom of expression that kind happens.