Tom Scholz Quotes

Usually when I write a song, I'll write the music and then kind of fit some words to it.

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 mean Gorilla was really our first sort of goes at songwriting.

I've been writing music since 4th grade, and I love putting words together and expressing things in a way that you can move your head to and you can really relate to, because I have a lot to say.

I have a tape recorder, and I just sing into it. I like to write that way. Sometimes I'll just get melodic ideas, and then I'll go home and sit down and add the lyrics. Or sometimes I'll get a lyric idea that I love. Usually it's pretty combined. Usually I get some kind of a lyrical concept and a melody and work with that.

I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.

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.

Yes, basically, like you said, I'll work out a chord pattern and work out the lyrics over that.

Every song I've ever written always starts with the words because I want the music to be the musical extension of the feelings of the words, and not the words being the emotional extension of the feeling of the music.

The process is always the same. I get an inspiration for a new song, I put it down on paper immediately so I won't lose it. When I am ready to go to the studio with it, I play it a few times on the piano and edit, add, and type the lyrics and take it to the studio. Sometimes I don't have anything on paper.

I really, really like writing songs.

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

I could tell it was a popular move as a writer to walk down the bass lines while you were writing a song.

I have to write the songs before I become too enamored with my own melodies.

I'm a professional songwriter - personal attitudes have nothing to do with writing a song.

Well, I started writing songs about three years ago when I learned to play the guitar, but I've been singing since I was eleven.

The songs sort of come out spontaneously and it'll take me awhile to figure out what exactly is happening lyrically, what kind of story I'm telling. Then I start building little bridges - word bridges - to make everything go from one point to the next point to the next point until it reaches the end.

Sometimes I'll write without the guitar or the piano, but most of the time I'll be playing and just improvising some words. And when I get something that sounds good, a line with a story in it, I'll try and tease it out and figure out where the story is going.

I'm good at melody - I'll write the top-line melody and ideal words I want to go with it. But I'm not that good at writing lyrics. I bounce those back and forth with songwriters or someone who can sing.

If I hear a conversation and somebody says something intriguing, my first thought is, 'Is that a song?' I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say which of these things do I want to record.

The very best thing you can do is to try to write a song that has some sort of impact.

'Chandelier' took, like, four minutes to write the chords, then, like, 12-15 minutes to write the lyrics. Probably 10 or 15 minutes to cut the vocals.

It takes me, like, half an hour to write the lyrics for a song. They just come out.

I do always the music before the lyrics. The story or an idea for the lyrics appears during the composing process normally, but some other times I already have a strong idea of the story I would like to sing before any music comes to my mind.

I always start with writing vocal melodies before writing lyrics.