Tom Jenkinson Quotes

Sometimes I get ideas for lyrics in anyplace, but I work a lot in the studio. So I collect little bits of lyrics. I go through the box of lyrics I have and see if something fits.

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.

A friend and I started a band together. I am kind of learning how to play instruments. We write stuff over Skype or e-mail. I send one part and he writes another.

When I was making my first record there would be something that would come out that would inspire you, you know? You'd see someone on TV or on the radio.

I would imagine that most of my writing is done spontaneously. I had no intention of writing, and then I'll just walk through the house, and I'll hear this melody, and I'll turn on the tape players and go back to it later on. Some days I'll get 3-5 songs a day.

Playing in my early bands, working as a studio musician, producing and going to art school was, in retrospect, my apprenticeship. I was learning and creating a solid foundation of ideas, but I wasn't really playing music.

I do always the music before the lyrics. The story or an idea for the lyrics appears during the composing process normally, but some other times I already have a strong idea of the story I would like to sing before any music comes to my mind.

I have a method of working on music: I'll get up in the morning and throw down some drums on my drum machine, and then I'll come back later and try to pop off rhythms to it.

Instrumental music can be about anything. It's about a mood, and I usually title my instrumental songs long after they're written. Sometimes I figure out the titles when I'm doing the CD package, and that's very common for a lot of people who write instrumental music.

With a computer, you have access to so many drum sounds and samples that your snare drum will be unrelated harmonically to your kick drum.

With all the touring and distractions going on, I would get a sound together but I wouldn't have time to work on it. So I sat on the road with the sketches and saw how they revealed themselves emotionally.

I found it easy to produce. I'm not the musical guy. I can't read and play music like that, but put some drums and a sample in front of me and I can whip it up nice, and I'll work out some keys and find some interesting instruments to put under it.

I play the living hell out of my guitars daily, and as sure as the sun rises in the east, killer licks, ideas, grooves, patterns and songs erupt every time.

I'm always working on my own music, too. I've been working on a record for a few years.

I feel like a lot of people look at pop music with a very formulaic perspective in numbers and patterns, but an outsider would think that the process is very natural. It is, but there are a lot of times where people treat it like a sport - there are tricks you can pull, different combinations that make something better. I don't really think I approach it that way, but I definitely have a love for the science that is pop song writing.

I'm really grateful. But I never had the rock star dream. I thought it would be cool to be a modern-day composer.

I'm intrigued on how music is made, that's how I started getting into it. Of course I've been in the booth before, just joking around to see how it is, and I'll make a couple of beats here or there and help my artists out. But other that, I'll stick to listening.

Producing is important because if there is no one making the tunes, there is nothing for the DJs to play, and nothing for the people to dance to.

It's like a dream sometimes, a song just pops into your head and you can't tell if it's something you heard or it's new and you got to write it down.

There are still songs that I'm writing. I like to write. I like to take a long time to do my songs, not even the actual writing process, but conceptualizing, getting into the songs. That's why I stopped doing mixtapes.

I don't love performing, because it's nerve-racking and it's time - consuming to rehearse a whole set - and my time can often be better served writing music and just making it and putting it out.

I have this really beautiful Martin guitar, and it just kind of writes songs for me.

Quite often when I record a song, writing it and making a demo is the big thing and, after that, I think, how do I actually translate this into real life? A lot of the time I think I can't be bothered.

Once I get the track I know what to do with it.

If it takes you three years to set up a studio, and you've made one track with that setup, then the logical thing to do is not change anything and just do another one using the same set of sounds.