Jay Kay Quotes

I'm not a great guitarist, but I do bits and bobs. I'm mainly a songwriter and a composer. I've done a lot of scoring and some stuff for British pop music that did pretty well, but I've mainly been working on my own stuff with Duncan Sheik.

Simon Hale, the British arranger, does all string and wood arrangements on my records.

We'll set up a demo session and try to knock out eight or ten songs and make them sound as close as we can to a record with the money and time we have.

I love to work with producers who are very good with their chord progressions.

I pretty much built a band out of the most incredible guys I could possibly find. I didn't really want a six-piece band, but it just ended up being a six-piece band because these guys are all awesome.

Plus, we spend most of our time writing music. Most of the time is spent in the studio in my house.

I'm not really gonna stop. We've got so much stuff to do, so many songs we talked about, so many things to record.

I sit and write songs alone and then get together with people to help me flesh it out into a recording.

When you're making a record, you try to achieve stylistically what fits on you. Like a good old coat, you know what I mean?

Almost all the producers I know and dig, like Quincy Jones or Brian Eno, are really musicians first. I'm a composer, an orchestrator, an arranger and a musician first. I know how to write and rewrite songs, and the genius is really in the rewriting.

I want to make an album with just great beats and big vocals and just amazing lyrics.

We love great melodies and great songs that have great hooks and melodies, so we start a little bit more on that side as opposed to other people that start more lyric-based. Sometimes we'll do it the other way.

I have been playing acoustic music for a very long time, and it's something that I am very comfortable doing, so if I made a record, it would probably be a mixture of that and some other things that I'm interested in.

I usually speak with all my drummers so that I write my songs with them in mind, and we'll have bass sounds, choir sounds, and then you can multi-task with all these orchestral sounds. Through the magic medium of technology, I can play all kinds of sounds - double bass and stuff.

When I started out, even though you had your rhythm section, they were big horn sections, strings, live people laying on every part of the floor in the studio waiting for their chance to get on that one little track.

When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble.

That's what Joe Don Rooney and I do. He plays guitar and I play bass - and there's no reason to call it a band if you're not gonna have the guys in the band playing on the records.

'Nova' was one of the tracks that inspired me to create 'Fade,' which later became 'Faded'. It has a beautiful melody, and the way it progresses throughout the whole track is just amazing!

I'm always working on new music.

I am getting to work with some good musicians, artistes, and composers.

I don't play any instruments. I don't produce. I don't know which keys or chords I am using, so, in essence, I need the band and the production team - otherwise, I am just some guy with a hat and a song.

In recording, you're trying to make something work sonically - getting the right inflection on the right guitar sound - and maybe a part that would be musically great doesn't sound as cool. On paper, though, it's all stripped back. The musical idea is the one that wins.

Coldplay are just four friends trying to make great music.

I know melody. I know rhythm; I know bass guitar; I know the piano. I know everything about music that helps build the music that go along with creating the whole art form, you know what I'm saying?

I do feel most at home playing live, but the feeling of getting into the studio to see the new songs take shape was really incredible.