Songwriting Technique Quotes

I'm obsessed with great endings and crazy intros and stuff like that. I think we all are from what we've listened to and stuff, so I've always focused on great bridge melodies that just kind of naturally fit, or like a crazy ending at the end of 'Seize the Day,' something like that.

When I'm writing a song for another artist, I purposefully make it not for me; otherwise, I get too attached.

I think that any songwriter - and I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us - you don't write the songs anyhow.

The way I work, I'm not a confessional singer-songwriter.

When I first started writing songs, I did play with my fingers, and I had these kind of weird strums. There's, like, three or four strumming patterns that seemed kind of unique to me.

I generally have lyrics first, but you can't help that when you're writing lyrics you start to get a melody in your head. So they come kind of simultaneously.

I started writing rhymes first and then put it to the music. I figured out I could lock it to the beat better if I heard the music first. I like to get a lot of tracks, put the track up and let the music talk to me about what it's about.

This little four-string songwriting tool started changing the way I brought songs to the group.

What happens is, especially when I was writing for my band, Creedence, and it's the way I write now, I go into "guitar lick" mode. When I do, it sort of leads into a real song. I'd say to myself, your songwriting is coming up with a guitar lick, and the rest is easy!

I write in a mathematical manner. For some of my songs, I rhyme every syllable. It's a science.

I usually get my lyrics when I let my mind wander, when you're not really awake, but not yet fully asleep. I keep an open notebook by my bed and then just write whatever comes to me.

I teach songwriting a lot, and I always tell my students, 'You gotta write the little songs sometimes to get to the next big song in the chute.' You gotta write 'em to get to it. You never know what's going to be a little song or a big song.

On 'Check Your Head' and 'Ill Communication,' most of the lyrics are much more, 'OK, you take that, and I'll say that' - they're split up.

I think I initially started inventing characters in my songs because I didn't want to write directly about myself. Also, as a kid, I loved all the character names in Beatles songs, like Eleanor Rigby and Lovely Rita and Mean Mr. Mustard and Maxwell and Rocky Raccoon.

I'm definitely a fan of juxtaposition. Using the most beautiful line to say the most horrific thing - I think one of the main things in songwriting is definitely friction between the words and the melody.

I first write melodies that will make people shiver, and then, I add the lyrics.

I found a sound that people really liked - I found this basic concept and all I did was change the lyrics and the melody a little bit. My songs, if you listen to them, they're quite a lot alike, like Chuck Berry.

You need a balance at all times. If the verse is a bit messy, you need it to be less messy right after. It needs to vary. 'Shake It Off' is a good example, where the math behind the drama is pretty clear.

The older I get, the more I think it's this listening. You listen for it, and you have a bit of patience. And it'll come until it sounds - to me, the best songs I've written, I think, are ones that I can't hear anything - any of myself in it. It sounds like a cover song, like somebody else's song - really something you've stolen wholesale off a radio that you've listened to in someone else's flat.