David Berman Quotes

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.

Me and Tory Lanez got good chemistry together. We could make a song so easy, but we always like to figure out what we're really doing. We can make a good song, but it gotta make sense.

There's always a tension between wanting to write a really concise, instant gratification type song that gets under your skin the first time you hear it, and wanting to really stretch out. I think it's a healthy tension.

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

For me it's also - the music is equally as important. I mean I think as somebody who writes music, there just has to sort of be the marriage between both.

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

The act of song writing and recording became one and the same to me; because I essentially recorded everything I did from the day I began trying to write songs. I've always had a lot to say. I'd always written poems.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

When you're in the middle of writing a song, you can come up with this whole web of stuff only you know how to get through. That's very entertaining for me to do that.

I just get an idea and then all of a sudden I've got a song.

I always try to write a song, I never just want to write a record.

Usually when a song comes to me, I don't ask a lot of questions; I hear something, and I just let it out in song. It's like making a salad. Everything I hear, and everything I am, I mix together in a different way in each song.

Sometimes I'll write without the guitar or the piano, but most of the time I'll be playing and just improvising some words. And when I get something that sounds good, a line with a story in it, I'll try and tease it out and figure out where the story is going.

Sometimes I'll come up with a lick that I really love, and I'll try to put the right words to it for years. Suddenly something comes to me that works just right.

Songwriting isn't always something that's directly proportionate to the experience.

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

I love Bill Finn's stuff. It's so rewarding for an actor. It's conversational but intricate. He writes some beautiful, simple songs and melodies, but he also writes this cacophony for people.

That's pretty much how every song of mine works - I start with gibberish and melody and phrasing. I speak it naturally first. And then I think about lyrics that fit into that.

When I'm recording, I usually just mumble and hum a melody and then fill the words in as I go.

It takes a lot of emotional high and struggles to write songs.

With Fountains Of Wayne, I almost always start with lyrics - maybe not the entire lyric, but I almost always need a couplet or something, and then I work from there. With Ivy, it's much more about the atmosphere and the vibe.

Whenever I have a bunch of tunes written, I always find a kind of uniform that accompanies the songs.

I write songs on a course of time that's comfortable for me. I would probably never write a song from start to finish in the course of a day, hell probably not even a week. My mind is always going to change and my emotional state will also change on a daily basis.

Well, it grow together. It's like, first time I try to write a song is the first time I try to play the guitar. And so I can write a song without the guitar. But it really grow together. I really like stay with my guitar. But it just happen, is the inspiration come through man. Because, I personally, it look like, could I write a whole heap a tune, it look like. But I pick special tune to write. Cause a man can think of plenty things. Yuh know wah ah mean.

Sometimes I start with a great title or idea, sometimes a great melody will run through my mind; but the higher percentage of the time, the words and music pretty much come at the same time.