Eddie Van Halen Quotes

I don't sit down to write a song, per se.

I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.

When you tune your guitar in a different way, it lends itself to a new way of looking at your songwriting.

People come in because they like 'Old Town Road.' They'll find out that I'm just not going to stick to that.

You kind of have to celebrate the moment that you get to create something that you love that falls into the parameters of a 3-minute-and-20-second song, to try to be creative inside of those parameters.

It's like telling Mozart that there are too many notes in an opera. Which one do you want us to take out?

As a composer I could never find use for over 4 or 5 notes in any musical number, and as a playwright most of my plays have two acts because i couldn't think of an idea for the third act.

Being a musician enables a person to bend the notes and express things that are inside you, no matter what.

Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

I create little challenges for myself, like, 'Okay, whatever you do in this song, you've got to somehow work in Greek Cypriots,' or something like that.

Some song ideas absolutely require a kind of rigid discipline, and others require absolute chaotic abandon. The form is only valid if you know how to un-form it. I don't mean to sound like an intellectual here!

Growing up in a band is weird - you get stuck hanging on to what it is you think you are. But what I took into Depeche was that punk ethic, that you don't have to be accomplished to be a musician. If you've got ideas, you can do this.

My first album didn't come out until I was 27, which in pop years is late, you know. But when it came time to arrange it, I became a kid in a toy shop. I had a harp and a saxophone quartet and a symphony orchestra. I went berserk for a time.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

Bach and Beethoven, all of them, they had to write something to please the upper structure, those with money and power.

I run around so much that I finally reasoned that composing is the one musical endeavour which you can do anywhere, anytime.

With a computer, there are too many choices, and I always liked working within limits. You know, if you look at Mozart, who had this strict classical framework - an allegro, an andante, a scherzo and a finale - you see that within that formula, he got results he might never have gotten if he had all the options in the world.

My first instrument was my voice. I was always singing and writing melodies when I was a little kid. I just sort of taught myself whatever was around. If there were instruments around, I'd play them. I always liked the idea of not being shown but coming up with my own energetic connection to the instrument.

It's a real gift to be able to have the works of brilliant, great people to learn from and build from. It gives you so much more to draw on, and then you don't have to be all about three-chord pop songs. I don't really like that kind of writing.

That makes classical music work, the ability to improvise.

Piano should be the one. Yeah, because that's your basis. Everything is right there in front of you.

There's many, many ways to write a song. But generally, sitting down at a table and writing is not one of them.

I make the kind of music I like.

I've always wanted to make music like people write plays, so I was inspired by writers as much as musicians.