Songwriting Techniques Quotes

The songwriting community in Nashville really is all about your talent. It's not about your image, and you have to be humble. You have to be kind. You have to have zero ego when you walk into that writing room.

Our music did not sound like the Beatles in any way, shape or form. I could never find it in myself to use those Beatles tricks in Styx records because they were sacred to me. But what they did always influenced my thinking.

I write the songs first and in most cases teach myself the technique second.

I like writing on piano and a computer, and a lot of 'Plans' came out of samples and vocal lines.

All my songs were made at the end of the neck, 'farmer's corner' chords.

I'd hear a tune in my head and the words would come. And then, very suddenly it just stopped. It seemed too stilted to try and learn how to write a song, to go to round robins and to learn things from other people on how to write a song. So I just stopped and did other things.

I started to write the song. And I was in Gladewater, Texas, one night with Carl Perkins and I said, I've got a good idea for a song. And I sang him the first verse that I had written, and I said it's called "Because You're Mine." And he said, "I Walk The Line" is a better title, so I changed it to "I Walk The Line."

I want to make great songs.

When I write songs, I like to write lyrics first, and I think that's different from a lot of singer-songwriters. But I heard Sammy Cahn was asked what comes first, the lyrics or the music, and he said, 'The paycheck.'

Everybody wants to write a hit song, but in Nashville people want to write the best song, which was my original intention as a singer/songwriter.

No matter how many people try, no matter how many fancy songwriters in Los Angeles try to break it down to a formula... to an extent, there isn't a science to writing great songs, I suppose. For me, it's always about melody - it doesn't matter what genre of music you're writing, if there's a strong melodic thing somewhere, whether that's in a vocal or in a guitar part or a sample. Something that sticks in your brain, that seems to be something that works.

As a songwriter, I feel like, just for inspiration and research purposes, I have to listen to everything.

I write a lot from instinct. But as you're writing out of instinct, once you reach a certain level as a songwriter, the craft is always there talking to you in the back of your head...that tells you when it's time to go to the chorus, when it's time to rhyme. Real basic craft... it's second nature.

You can find me in the melodies, the chord progressions, the song style and structure. The lyrical places you fine me most are in the lyrics that 'show' more than 'tell.' I like to describe what the listener is seeing and let them make up the middle rather than telling them.

That's the beauty of song writing. You never know when inspiration will come or how it will hit, you just gotta kinda grasp a hold of it and make sense of it somehow.

I don't think rock n' roll songwriters should worry about art. I don't think it comes into it...as far as I'm concerned, Art is just short for Arthur.

I don't think I'm a great songwriter, but I think I've learned a lot about it, and I don't think there's any one way to do it. I don't think I can control it at all. I can just kind of hope that it happens.

Some people, it [songwriting] comes faster. Some people, it comes slower.

There are two things John and I always do when we're going to sit down and write a song. First of all we sit down. Then we think about writing a song.

When I get an idea for a song it would gel in my mind for weeks or months, and then one day just like that, Ill write it.

It's been neat to find out different writing strategies. I've been in the room with so many different writers. Sometimes, you write with tracks, and other times, with acoustic guitars. That's been really a cool thing, because it brings out different lyrics with you.

I've also been writing with my guitarist, Ted Barnes, and he's amazing. Writing with him has taught me a lot about my own writing process, in the sense that it's incredably personal to write with someone else from scratch.

I started playing the acoustic guitar for more singer-songwriter type stuff. I bet if I would have gotten more approval for my "rock playing", I might be a world class shredder.

It took me a long time to learn how to write a good song.

I knew I had to have a hit. I would get no more chances. Analyzing what they had in common I discovered they had many similar elements: harmonic rhythm, placement of the chord changes, choice of harmonic progressions, similar instrumentation, vocal phrases, drum fills, content, even the timbre of the lead solo voice. I decided to write a song that incorporated all these elements in one record.