Sam Smith Quotes

I painted the picture, and in the colors the rhythm of the music quivers. I painted the colors I saw.

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.

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.

I usually write my music on a piano, and I really enjoy performing that way, because that actually shows how the music was in my mind before it actually became an electronic song.

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

I always start with the music and then try to figure out what I want to write about lyrically.

I write music visually.

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

When I write the music for any of my songs, I write as a composer-lyricist in my head.

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.

When I am writing music, I sometimes envision a video playing alongside.

I love the name 'Stella McCartney.' It's a beautiful name the way it rolls off the tongue. A couple of years ago, I wrote a cello concerto and used that as the basis for the rhythmic and melodic structure of the main motif of the cello part.

Well, I have to have some type of visual in my head to finish a song. I can't finish a song if I can't see anything.

I love getting time to write a piece of music that can settle in and set the tone of the show.

When I'm writing [songs], some days the pen just goes. I'm not in charge and I'm almost listening outside of it. That's when I realize that we all have to start looking at life as a gift. It's like listening to a color and believing that these colors have soul mates and once you get them all together the painting is complete.

Writing songs has always been hard and easy. It's not always easy when you want it to be, and then sometimes it's just like turning on the faucet. That's just the nature of it.

I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.

I would write poems and think up melodies to them later.

I found songwriting really hard at first, but after a while it was actually very easy.

Whenever I get an idea for a song, even before jotting down the notes, I can hear it in the orchestra, I can smell it in the scenery, I can see the kind of actor who will sing it, and I am aware of an audience listening to it.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

We all love to sing, and when we sit down to write a song I think it kind of shows itself to us.

But then you have to write a song, so at that point, I picked up the reins and started to write lyrics.

I'll sit around and play my guitar; that's how I write tunes.

When talking about writing, I often use the analogy of archaeology. There are these great tunes all around. Your skill as a musician allows you to pick them out without breaking them.