Melody Quotes
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I met the pianist Barry Harris when I was about fifteen. He would show me changes, which I had no idea existed. I knew about scales, but I didn't think about chords. I was fortunate in that he lived right around the corner so I'd be at his house almost every day and he showed me about playing melodies over chords. After about three years, I could play some gigs. I worked with drummer Roy Brooks and other guys my age at that time, like trumpeter Lonnie Hillyer. Some of the older guys were Paul Chambers, Doug Watkins and Louis Hayes
Charles McPherson
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When you make a melody that doesn't come with words from the get-go, sometimes you're just thinking about random vowel sounds that go with it - and it's really, really hard to write lyrics that actually obey the vowel sounds.
David Longstreth
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When children listen to music, they don't just listen. They melt into the melody and flow with the rhythm. Something inside starts to unfold its wings - soon the child and the music are one.
Michael Jackson
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I'll sing over some chords, searching, what does the music conjure up, where's the melody taking you? I deliberate over the lyrics, I really do. I'll come up with one line in a day, and then it might be a couple of days before I come up with the rhyming line. It's never been easy for me.
Rod Stewart
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I think my best songs come from me sitting at a piano, bashing my head against a brick wall for hours and hours on end to get one good melody.
Lewis Capaldi
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On my songs, they always start on the Voyager and I start with a simple loop and build it up from there. I usually give the whole thing to Erin finished, often with lyrics and she makes the vocal melody work with the song.
Roger O'Donnell
The Cure
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When I pick up the guitar, it's a melody, and that's what drives the lyrics. It's bits and pieces of truth, but it is storytelling.
Ray LaMontagne
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I used to - my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I've always heard kind of melodies in my head.
Bono
U2
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The experience of playing music at a young age really opens up one's mind to different melody in life itself, literally - like, when you've even played a recorder, or whatever, it becomes a lot easier to hear the beauty in a bird's song, or the quiet tune in a gentle rustle of the wind.
Dave Smalley
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Each individual composes the music of his own life. If he injures another, he brings disharmony. When his sphere is disturbed, he is disturbed himself, and there is a discord in the melody of his life. If he can quicken the feeling of another to joy or to gratitude, by that much he adds to his own life; he becomes himself by that much more alive. Whether conscious of it or not, his thought is affected for the better by the joy or gratitude of another, and his power and vitality increase thereby, and the music of his life grows more in harmony.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
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I want to throw my voice more, I want to manipulate melody more... I want to be less deliberate and mechanical... I want less melody.
Sufjan Stevens
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So that's the challenge for me and that has always been the challenge - finding that melody, that riff, that thing that just lights me up and makes me feel like it's Christmas.
Steven Siro Vai
Alcatrazz
