Singing in Gaelic is very, very natural to do. I think lends itself very much so to being sung.
I played the coronet first, and then I upgraded to the trumpet. First song I learned on there was 'Hot Cross Buns.'
Good music is made with the help of many musicians who express their joy in the swaras.
Listening to Nat Cole prompted me to sing sentimental songs with distinct diction.
My first song was called 'Portrait.' It would just be poetry, and I really never understood how to write the structure of writing a song. I just knew the feeling, and I knew it was supposed to break and change at the same part, so that's how I write music.
Growing up, any time I would sit down with my grandfather to learn or talk about Carnatic music, he would bring up G. N. Balasubramaniam. Listening to the recordings he would play me, I was dazzled by GNB's voice and how he was able to execute ideas that I could barely wrap my head around.
Chestnut brown canary, ruby throated sparrow, sing a song, don't be long, thrill me to the marrow.
Melodies are far more interesting. They are there, in your face, in certain sections of the songs. People do complain about the melody thing, but we do hit patches of melody and beauty, as well as the other stuff.
When I started rhyming, my favorite rhythms were from John Coltrane and some of the things he did on sax. And certain rhythms that I hear on drums, I try to emulate with my words, dropping on the same patterns that them beats or them notes would hit.
A lot of times when songwriters get together and write a song... somebody will come in with a hook and a lot of times they come out with something that sounds a little crafty.
An aria in an opera - Handel's 'Ombra mai fu,' for example - gets along with an incredibly small number of words and ideas and a large amount of variation and repetition. That's the beauty of it. It's not taxing to the listener's intelligence because if you haven't heard it the first time round, it'll come around again.
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.
When I write a song, it's all about the riff - the riff first, then the words come later.
Let there be songs to fill the air.
Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.
