Songwriting Quotes
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I started just concentrating on songwriting when I was abut 20; I'd been in rock bands six or seven years, kinda got that out of my system, I said, "ok, you ain't gonna be a rock star, you don't look like a rock star, it probably ain't gonna happen. So what you should do is write songs and maybe other people will do your songs."
Billy Joel
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Songwriting is the other weight on the opposite side of the scale from touring. They balance me out creatively.
Tommy Shaw
Styx
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She knew the intensity of adolescence, and knew no cure for it except growing up. And then one has age and experience, and mourns the loss of intensity. Maybe it's why musicians and mathmaticians are said to peak young-poetry needs the fire of an unbounded universe.
Sara Paretsky
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I knew I could make money from songwriting, so how much and when was not really the question.
Ryan Tedder
OneRepublic
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Bringing up issues that are hard to deal with is a challenge for me, and I think that's what draws me to song writing.
Brett Dennen
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Teasing out the way the world might look through another's eyes is what makes the creative process so fascinating and enjoyable.
Stephen Carter
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Songwriting is kind of like a craft. It's not something that just comes in a dream. You've got to work at it.
Sean Lennon
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Songwriting is one thing that I have blessed to myself. It's a very personal thing for me, the business is very shared and you're constantly around people. So it just kinda happens when it happens and I write when I want to write and that's the way it's going to be or else I wouldn't even be doing this.
William Clark Green
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My songwriting process is based on a formula: Color, tone, words. When I hear production, I initially identify the color that resonates with me. From there, I am able to translate the color into tone or emotion, which may depend on a number of things.
Ravyn Lenae
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Every time I write a song, it's different. I'm all about the rhythm of the words and the melody. Musically, you gotta have a throbbing pulse going. But as far as what it's all about, there's a million ways to go. You have to invent a new code for every song. Then you have to break it. It's like Scrabble or a crossword puzzle on steriods. I could talk about the process for days. But it's never dull and there's no one way in.
Dan Bern
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One of the great things about songwriting; it's not an intellectual experience
Keith Richards
The Rolling Stones
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I've been sort of writing sketches for songs on my own forever and putting them down on cassette tapes. Yet for years and years and years, my main songwriting outlet was as a member of Sonic Youth, and for most of our time together, our best songs were written in a group setting, where the four of us were getting together in a room.
Lee Ranaldo
Sonic Youth
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I don't force it. If you don't have an idea and you don't hear anything going over and over in your head, don't sit down and try to write a song. You know, go mow the lawn...My songs speak for themselves.
Neil Young
Buffalo Springfield
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A lot of the great songwriters in history have been collaborators, with a separate lyricist.
Mike Gordon
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When I write, I never know the endings. What I think works in my stories is the fact that when I write, I really want to find out what is going on-I'm writing for myself as a reader. It's like when you dream a dream. I want to know what's behind the door. If I navigate, it's from a place that's totally intuitive.
Etgar Keret
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Sonic Youth was not a singer-songwriter band. It was an electric collective. And, whatever else people's perceptions of Sonic Youth were, it was always about putting together a time-based composition - and that is exactly what songwriting is, in its classic form.
Lee Ranaldo
Sonic Youth
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People have been brainwashed into believing that it's got to be down or it wouldn't be blues. But it's not so. It's got to be a fact or it wouldn't be blues.
Willie Dixon
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I kind of talk about songwriting in the sense that it's really not my job to try to state hard truths. I'm not out to say this is what truth is, this is what's false, this is reality, this is not reality. What I prefer is to try to create a space where truth can move.
Denison Witmer
