Jesse Harris Quotes

I think that once you start writing songs, you start developing a library of ideas that you can go and take from, so it gets easier as you go.

I usually dream of melodies. When I wake up I have them in my head. I usually come up with things in the middle of the night because that's when my mind is the quietest. I always have my tape recorder, pen and pad by my bed just in case.

I still don't know if I can write songs. I don't think anyone ever knows if they can write songs.

That's what I find with any good song, you just have to let it happen. Out of about twenty songs you might write, one of any significance. It might be thirty or forty, but I just keep churning them out and churning them out in hope that one of them will stick.

I find it very difficult to compose when I'm not playing.

I don't get my inspiration from a specific source. It's more like if you listen to a good tune, it gives me inspiration to write a better tune.

I've always loved both writing and songwriting. The journey is fascinating to me.

I try to imagine what the greatest song I could ever write would sound like, and then try to do it.

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've never had trouble finding inspiration for new songs, no matter what I'm doing.

I wouldn't want to write a song in a pair of sneakers. I think it would be a horrible song.

It doesn't necessarily take four years to write a good piece of music. It might take four hours. It just depends on when your inspiration comes.

When songs fall from the sky, all I can do is catch them before they hit the ground.

Songwriting is best. It's the hardest ... finest ... tightest. It also requires the most discipline.

All my songs instinctively erupted from my guitar and lyrical visions followed the spirit of the music, bot image wise and rhythmical cadence wise. It remains one of life's greatest joys to this day.

When I wrote the words and I have the music, I felt, wow, you know, this has got to be right. I got to sing it right.

I wanted to create a more spontaneous outlet for my songwriting to have alongside the more long-winded process of making an album. I wanted to have some fun.

Ideas for songs can come from something as simple as a photograph and letting my imagination run wild on an old photograph that I found, or to a film that I have seen or to just most of the time, just daily walking through life and keeping your eyes open.

Sometimes I dream song ideas. I write a song in my dream, the melody and everything. But then sometimes I can't remember them. I think later on, I probably do.

I sort of recognize it, as opposed to shaping it. Oh, that's a good idea, that's a good line. I wonder where I can use that. And when you get into a rhyme group like 'not,' you got a lot of rhymes, you got a lot of choices. The more you do it, the luckier you get.

I started writing little short stories and poems as soon as I learned to read and write. I think I was six years old. And then when I got to be eleven, twelve, and into my teens, I was just listening to records all the time, and I got a guitar. I started to take guitar lessons when I was twelve.

I would always write lyrics and songs on the piano.

I love playing our older songs along with newer ones but If all I have is my old stuff, I quit. Creating is more rewarding.

When I'm asked about my work, I try to explain that there is no mystery involved. It is work. But things happen all the time that are unexpected, uncontrolled, unexplainable, even magical. The work prepares you for that moment. Suddenly the clouds roll in and the soft light you longed for appears.

Once I got the open tunings for some reason, I began to get the harmonic sophistication that I heard that my musical fountain inside was excited by. Once I got some interesting chords to play with, my writing began to come.