Tones and I Quotes

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

The goal is always just to write the best song that you can write. I mean, the process for writing a song is the process for writing a song. It's not something I look at it as something I need to do something different.

I always start with the music and then try to figure out what I want to write about lyrically.

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 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.

I find it harder to write the lyrics afterwards because then you're just trying to fit them into something that's already there.

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

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.

The melody will tell me what the song should be about, the tone of the song. That's when the intellect comes in. Because I have a list of possible titles and concepts, and I expand on that.

I really don't have a method. I gravitate towards the organic/acoustic, but I still often complete songs musically before attempting to find the lyric.

If you wanna write a song, ask a guitar

I'm always making music. I'm constantly making little musical recordings on my phone or on a little voice recorder I carry with me so I can remember these little pieces of music that eventually becomes songs.

I found songwriting really hard at first, but after a while it was actually very easy.

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

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

But then you have to write a song, so at that point, I picked up the reins and started to write lyrics.

When you're in the middle of writing a song, you can come up with this whole web of stuff only you know how to get through. That's very entertaining for me to do that.

I would start seeing, in just the sense I was saying now, the kind of record it was going to be and what the arrangement demands, and what my vocal part should be in the record. This was all emerging as the song was emerging.

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.

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

Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.

Ultimately, I'm a fan of music. I describe writing music sometimes as hieroglyphics, like, you know, excavating, gently brushing off these artifacts and discovering the song underneath it all. It seems as if it is already written in it.

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

Songwriting is something that's very daunting until you have your first successful song, I think.