Tom Misch Quotes

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.

Generally my songs are just some riffs slung together as an excuse for a guitar solo.

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.

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.

So writing a song is much harder than doing a classical piece for me, because in a classical piece, I can just let the mood dictate what's going to happen.

I write the vocals last, because I wanted to invent the music first and push the music to the level that I had to compete against it.

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

I'm definitely responsible for coming in with some basic chord changes, or ideas. Everybody in the band looks to me to come up with the basic seed, so it's not very productive to come in with nothing.

I just start playing music and eventually I sing something, a line of a verse or a B section or a line of a chorus, and the line that I end up singing is related to the music I'm playing, if that makes any sense. And I go from there.

I always begin to compose the melody first.

All of our songs take these really big creative turns and twists throughout the process, so sometimes songs will start out as a melody or some musical chord progressions.

I hear these melodies. I hear horn lines and string lines. That's what's fun about recording with an orchestra.

If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.

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

I usually have an idea of how I want a song to sound, but I don't always know how to get there.

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.

The music I wrote as a kid already was always instrumental. It was never based on lyrics.

Songs come to me and I hear them. At least in part, they are very complete; I hear the whole chorus, including the drum pattern, the base, the countermelody, the basic harmonic structure and the main thrust of the lyric.

I compose melodies in my head and then interpret them musically with my guitar and keep them recorded. The guitar helps me to build unique chord structures on simple melodies.

The creative process of composing music has always fascinated me.

Even when I was studying piano, I always preferred to play around with my own improvisations rather than do my studies. So I've always been interested in writing music from a very early age.

I'm not one of those guys who can just take a guitar into a room and come out with a song. I need all my instruments dotted around.

I didn't just sit down and write 'Summer In Kingston' from scratch; it came about from a bunch of songs I already had.

Writing music is very, very clinical. You just sit down at a piano, map out a theme and when all the technicalities come together, out pours the music.

I always find that, when it comes to writing songs, if the melody and the chords are working, we're 90 per cent there.