Melodic Creativity Quotes

Your solos should be as interesting as any other part of the song.

If it came back I would be thrilled. I would be delighted to write more songs. I need them now because I want to make an album and I have to depend on other people's music, which I've done for years. But still, it'd be really nice to be able to sprinkle it with my own.

You can have all personality in the world, the looks, etc., but if you don't have the songs, it doesn't close the deal.

Often people poopoo melody as if it's a cheap trick to make people like things, but in my experience it's the hardest part of the tune, to find something that doesn't immediately remind you of something that's happened before.

I've found that as I've learned to improvise melodically, it seems like I can come up with a bigger variety of stuff. I kind of selfishly enjoy it more, because I'm in the moment so much.

Music is everywhere, and it's an amazing and creative way for people to express themselves, so I love it.

Singing is just a feeling set to music.

I want to make music as good as Radiohead, as good as Coldplay. I can make hip-hop as good as anybody.

I always have melodies flowing in my head - whether I'm just at home, at the mall, at a restaurant or wherever. I'm always humming along to the random melodies that form in my head.

Conception of a film starts with the music. Always. I hear the movie before I can ever write it. I would say that 80% of the time, that's the successful stuff. It's the other stuff I have to work for to get right, and sometimes it doesn't work out, but the music is always the beginning. So I'm still a music journalist.

I have a very strange melodic gift: melodies come to me effortlessly.

What I do as a songwriter is a constant force in my life, that I'm grateful to have.

I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn't only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.

I'm not a big songwriter guy. People who are really good singer-songwriters usually left me kind of cold.