Joseph Jarman Quotes

I'm always creating. Whether I'm writing a lyric or making a beat, every day I'm doing something.

The source is always me, but when the inspiration is an amazing idea or entity, it gives the process of music making a very beautiful route to proceed on.

Writing songs has always been hard and easy. It's not always easy when you want it to be, and then sometimes it's just like turning on the faucet. That's just the nature of it.

The act of song writing and recording became one and the same to me; because I essentially recorded everything I did from the day I began trying to write songs. I've always had a lot to say. I'd always written poems.

I don't ever work in a way where something is an illustration of an event, but when something is occurring at the same time I see it as very informed by that.

When we start to write for a new record, we never really know what we're doing. We don't come into the room with a set of ideas, but miraculously, a song comes out of it.

It's hard for me to show work while I'm writing, because other people's comments will influence what happens.

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

I think it's important to really press on with the song writing and just go with it. There's no code, there's no craft... it's just let yourself shine through your music. If it's meant to be loved and heard, it'll happen.

There really is a certain magic that happens when you're in the studio. And it's important in life to feel that magic: to feel that there is something greater moving all this along.

There's an element to songwriting that I can't explain, that comes from somewhere else. I can't explain that dividing line between nothing and something that happens within a song, where you have absolutely nothing, and then suddenly you have something. It's like the origin of the universe.

There's this element of surprise when you're writing songs, like it's something outside of you that you get to be part of. And it's just exciting. And that's why I keep writing - because I like that feeling.

Ultimately, if I'm really moved by something, it's going to go on the record and that's that.

Something just happens when you're making a record, where certain things start to come out. It's just something in the air.

When people think of someone being prolific, it's like, 'He's got a vault with 5,000 songs in it,' or something, but I just kind of pick them out of the air when they float by.

The songs I've written that are the strongest, I'm like: 'I don't know where that came from. It just kind of popped out.' You feel you can't take a whole lot of credit for it. I didn't purposefully will it into existence.

A lot of times, if you're not getting inspiration right away, we'll listen to stuff to get inspired.

In my off-time, I do record. Once in a while, I'll just go into the studio if there's a really good song that I have in my head and want to do. I think, as artists, you're constantly in creative motion. If I stopped writing songs, then that's a part of me that would stop in my life, and I need constant motion.

You're best off when you're part of the centre of the creative universe.

Being in a studio is quite a creative and energetic process.

What's cool about making music is when you create a record, it comes from somewhere.

I usually start with a lyric and see where that takes me.

I usually know the general emotion of a song, or the general feeling of it, and then I think I just get so excited by the act of recording. I love that process so much that I feel like if I knew exactly what I wanted I'd arrive at something too soon.

I feel like there are things that inspire the music, and then there's the music itself. I don't feel like I always need to force them together.

'Free Mind' was a song written over a couple of years. It was pretty much three different songs that I couldn't figure out how to put together - until one day, when I was in the studio, it kind of just fell into place.