Chad Smith Quotes

All the folks I play with come from jazz backgrounds or at least appreciate spontaneity within the parameters of a pop song.

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

I just go in the studio and write on the spot and see what comes out.

Whenever I'm making songs, I am pretty much, quote unquote, freestyling them into existence.

When After Forever stopped, I didn't want to first find a band, then see if I could write with them, figure that whole thing out, then record an album. Instead, I worked with people I knew would be good songwriters out of an idea how I thought it would sound like.

Jazz is an interesting music. It's one of the few forms of music where everyone that's performing the music has a creative stake in the music. In jazz, everyone's improvising, and everyone's creating at the same time.

I think that's the great thing for us - we're a band full of songwriters, and we're capable of writing all kinds of songs.

Keith Richards has some sort of quote that says 'it takes two people to write a song,' and I'm of that school of thought, too.

It's different for every song. But for 'Say Something,' I think it was Chad who had an idea on guitar, and I had an idea on piano for different songs, and we just married them together. We bounce things off each other constantly and kind of massage all these ideas into a three and a half minute pop song.

If I'm not a jazz player all the time, I've at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.

The first record we put out on Fueled by Ramon, 'The Papercut Chronicles,' we had no idea what the term 'producer' meant. It was just us writing songs, and we are trying to go back to that - singing in a room and vibing off each other.

I just write songs whenever I feel like it, whenever they come to me.

I think its so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn't exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no ones ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips.

Well, our songwriting process is pretty collective.

I wasn't writing the music. Ed would write a piece of music. I'd listen to it and come up with a melody and then we would arrange it. We'd put it together and I would write lyrics to my melodies.

When you're writing with an artist or for an artist, you have to help them serve their vision. That's the cool part about writing songs. There are no rules.

I love going into the studio with just an idea of the direction. Like, I want this tempo... I love to start from scratch, and the tracks sort of take on a life of their own.

To be honest, I don't have a particular recipe, but I normally start with the chord progression and then I build it from there. I listen to a lot of jazz, so the chords are really important to me.

Some of my writing is very subconscious, and that's definitely what happened with 'Body Language' - I looped some basic bossa nova sounds and just started singing.

Amaal and I have some sort of magnetic connection. I am my brother's first assistant. So I have sung the scratch versions of all his songs. We make music at home, jam every day.

I write these songs and I like the idea of letting the band interpret it as they will. This band is like any band; it's not just me. This isn't just a way for me to play my songs. There are four distinct artistic voices, and they deserve to be expressed.

It's not like I'm writing full songs or full parts and setting it aside for Slash because, generally, I like him to make the first move and hear where he's coming from and what his concepts are, and then I build from there.

Songs seem to always spring from improvisation.

The way it always starts with me making my music is I will never, ever start with the production first. It's always me at the piano, fresh on the day. I never come with anything prepared.

I love playing jazz because I love the freedom you have to improvise. It has given me a feeling in my classical repertoire of creating the atmosphere of the here and now.