Shawn Colvin Quotes

I usually write lyrics first, and then when I get home or close to any kind of instrument, I usually make a melody for those lyrics.

I have yet to have a successful outcome of sitting in a room with someone and trying to write a song. The way that I generally co-write is that someone else writes the music or part of the music.

For 'Hey Monday,' there were songs that I co-wrote with songwriters or producers, but our last EP, the whole band did everything together. I've had a lot of experience with co-writes, which is basically what I'm doing now. I am writing things on my own, but I really believe co-writing makes you a better writer.

I don't know about the time those songs were written. But he was jamming with someone in Colorado or San Francisco, and I'm sure he was working on the lyrics right up to the show because they were really relevant for the situation.

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'm writing a record of comedy songs. I'm doing all these collaborations with artists. I bring them lyrics and they write the music to it.

There's two facets to writing a song. There's you sitting in your room writing the sentiments of the song; the lyrics, the melody and the changes, and then there's the part where you go into the studio and you put clothing on it.

When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers.

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.

If you're going to write a song, try to get together with a collaborator because it's better to write with collaborators.

I wrote the tunes and sang only nonsense words. Then came Moore and dressed them with the lyrics.

I did co-write 'Moment of Forever' with Danny Timms. He wrote the melody, and I just did the words.

I write a lot of my own music. I usually go in with a producer, and every now and then there will be another writer in the room.

I kind of write in a very classic way. I sit in the piano, working on some catchy, cool melodies and coming up with song concepts for those melodies. I kind of write in a very traditional way '- how people have written since the early '40s.

Obviously when you write songs you've got to record them, but just writing the songs is one of my favorite things to do.

I usually start with a lyric or a melody and then build a song around that.

When I'm writing with Tony Iommi, for example, still it's very easy. We go in, and I know exactly what his style is. It's very distinctive, and you know exactly what he's looking for, and we know exactly where we're going from the first chord.

Sometimes I start with lyrics - rarely - but sometimes I might have an idea for some lyrics that I wanna say. I write them down and figure out how to use that in a melody to write a song.

Songs are puzzles - you get an intro, or maybe an end, but you gotta fill in the rest. Sometimes they come easy and sometimes they're a pain in the ass.

Sometimes melody and sometimes lyrics. It depends on the tempo and feel of the song. Slower pieces usually begin with melody and faster ones with lyrics. I write for the song and it leads me to my conclusion.

I have a very solo career. I only write with people that I really adore.

I like to separate the music- and lyric-writing processes if I can. I'll sort of noodle around on my keyboard and my computer until I have a beat or a chord progression, I'll record it as a loop, export it to iTunes, then walk around with the loop and sort of talk to myself in the loop, and that's how I get the lyrics.

I tend to start with a full set of lyrics, and then my producer, Joel Little, and I work on the music collaboratively.

For me, songwriting starts with a melody. When a musician plays a chord progression, either the words and vocal melody come to me, or they don't. That's how I determine who to write with. It works, or it doesn't.

I've always been around musicians and always been the songwriter who doesn't end up playing the music.