John Scofield Quotes

When I'm making music, I can hear all the parts, all the instruments. I can hear what it should be.

When I first start writing a song, I usually write the title first, then the song, and I'll sing the song in my head and think of a visual of the song. If I can't think of a visual behind the song, I'll throw the song away.

I love making music. I love being involved in arranging music. It's very natural to know what I want to hear next and come up with ideas that are variations of what might be good.

I wouldn't sit down and work at writing a song like a novelist or something.

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

I write the music, produce it and the band plays within the parameters that I set.

For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.

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.

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.

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

Here is how I work: when I think that a film needs to have a principal theme, I search for a melody.

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.

The bass line is the anchor for me. I started with the bass, and either doubled that and then added the harmonies, or sometimes added my own harmonies that I've always wanted to sing on the song. And then it just went on from there - singing violin parts and trumpet parts and just trying to emulate the sounds of the instruments.

When you sit down and write a song, you kind of have the idea for the song, and you sit there at the piano and you kinda just write it. And then of course later there's some dinking around with it and changing some stuff.

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

I don't write poetry and then strum some chords and then fit the words on top of the chords.

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.

When I don't know what the music is going to be for a scene, I imagine some sort of orchestration going on and damned if they don't usually come up with a similar kind of thing.

For me, making music just starts with a simple melody, and lyrics will come sometime after that.

I mean Gorilla was really our first sort of goes at songwriting.

I could tell it was a popular move as a writer to walk down the bass lines while you were writing a song.

I'm a professional songwriter - personal attitudes have nothing to do with writing a song.

I always begin to compose the melody first.

Usually when I write a song, I'll write the music and then kind of fit some words to it.