Jose James Quotes

All my writing takes place during the recording of the master tapes. I never do have songs when I start up an album. I actually write them while I record.

You go in and record and sing them some and you go back in and rerecord and sing them some more. That's kind of how I did this album [The Art of Elegance].

I wouldn't just have other people write songs and me go out and sing it. I would sit down with a guitar and write 11 or 12 good songs for an album and that is gonna take a long time.

I never listen to music when I'm writing.

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.

Sometimes I'm in the studio, sometimes I'm not. It's about delivering the music to the artist, but it's also about the inspiration.

I'll have to get people to write songs for me right now until my own writing comes around.

You have to insulate yourself - I'm talking about from everything, people can be talking to you and you won't hear 'em - that's how you write a song. And I haven't been able to do that over here 'cause I'm so busy and then, when I am off, I want to get away from music.

I write by myself and then deliver the song. Everybody knows, 'Leave Ester alone when she's in her zone.' Give me a studio and the tracks, and I'll call you when the doctor is done.

I start a lot of songs and throw them out because the energy is not right. It's almost like the file becomes cursed. I have to delete it.

I've already got notebooks full of ideas for new music, so I'm gonna kind of nurture that just like I do all of my ideas and perfect it until it's ready and then I'll just let it go.

I find I'm not one of these composers that are, you know, walking along a beach or walking on the mountainside in County Donegal that's, you know, 'Oh, a melody.' It's more a matter of eventually taking that moment with me to the studio, and it begins to evolve.

For me to create an album of 12 songs, I've got to write about 80 songs. Half of those are totally weird and rubbish. But I get to some really good stuff after a while.

They're mostly done before we went into the studio, although I do like writing in the studio.

Everything I did on the 'Paid in Full' album and those first three albums, I wrote everything right in the studio.

The whole idea of doing an album is overwhelming sometimes. But, I get inspired when I get inspired and that's when it flows easily.

I usually write a lot. I don't make an album and don't write for two years and then end up with a blank paper starting over.

The words that I'm most happy with are the ones that come from my subconscious rather than my conscious. They just feel right. I think that's the same with music, really. If you're doing an album, there's ten or eleven sets of lyrics, so you get to the point of inspiration ten or eleven times - it's difficult.

The way we like to make music is we'll announce a project when there are zero songs, and then we take that pressure and try to make an album really fast.

I'd been working on new Slipknot material since the end of the 'All Hope Is Gone' tour cycle, but I ended up with so much stuff, I had to take a step back and stop working on it.

That is the most important thing to me, what happens behind the closed doors in the studio and makes me an artist.

I'm always making tracks. I find that when you make tons of tracks, you stumble upon genius. You can't always turn the drum machine on and right away there's a hot track. Sometimes you luck out. But it can take a lot of time between thinking about the artist, listening to music for inspiration or going to clubs.

I tend to have a lot of songs ready for each record I do anyway. I always have. I was thinking, the more you write, the better chance you're going to come up with a collection of stuff that is going to work together.

You're always thinking about making new music.

When I sit down to make music, I try to enter a flow; I always open a blank session and just make something that I feel like making.