Melody Quotes - Page 24

• We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Peace, War, Cosmic

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.133, Beacon Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no formula to it because writing every song, for me, is a little journey. The first note has to lift you and make you go, 'What's this?' You play C, but why is it that one day it leads to G and it didn't yesterday? I don't know. It's everything. It's the walk you take in the morning, it's the night before, the meeting with people, landscapes, the chats, all of that evolves in some way into melody, but I'm not sure how it's going to happen. I'm dealing with the unknown all the time and that is exciting.

  Enya

  Song, Morning, Writing

  "Everyone Thinks I'm So Shockable". Interview with Neil McCormick, www.telegraph.co.uk. November 24, 2005.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Folk melodies are the embodiment of an artistic perfection of the highest order; in fact, they are models of the way in which a musical idea can be expressed with utmost perfection in terms of brevity of form and simplicity of means.

  Bela Bartok

  Mean, Order, Ideas

  61 Copy quote

• Melody has a certain way that it projects back to you. It triggers certain nerves in your body and certain instincts that normally wouldn't be triggered by a normal voice.

  Akon

  Voice, Body, Way

  Interview with Spence D., www.ign.com. November 12, 2006.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Beauty addresses itself chiefly to sight, but there is a beauty for the hearing too, as in certain combinations so words and in all kinds of music; for melodies and cadences are beautiful; and minds that lift themselves above the realm of sense to a higher order are aware of beauty in the conduct of life, in actions, in character, in the pursuits of the intellect; and there is the beauty of the virtues.

  Plotinus

  Beauty, Beautiful, Character

  Plotinus (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Plotinus - Complete Enneads (Illustrated)”, p.60, Delphi Classics

  65 Copy quote

  Show source

• I like to hear melodies that go from one extreme to the next- saxophone to a bell to a whistle, for instance.

  Roscoe Mitchell

  Music, Bells, Next

  7 Copy quote

• I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes (harmonies) that were being used all the time. I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.

  Charlie Parker

  Play, Bored, Lines

  "Hear Me Talkin' to Ya". Book by Nat Shapiro, p. 354, 1955.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is our most complete record by far. A Hundred Million Suns sounds like the marriage of everything we learned from the Jeepster years and the Fiction years made into something new and bolder. Our spikiness and our indie-ness are coming through again with all the poppiness of the last two records. There's a lot of melody here and you can't cloak that whatever you do with it. This album is touched by our entire history, and hopefully sounds like our future too.

  Gary Lightbody

  Years, Two, Sound

  5 Copy quote

• Let your life yield a sweet, winsome melody that this old world needs so desperately. Yes you can if you will.

  Charles R. Swindoll

  Graduation, Sweet, Yield

  Charles R. Swindoll (2006). “Great Attitudes for Graduates!: 10 Choices for Success in Life”

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think more influential than Emily Dickinson or Coleridge or Wordsworth on my imagination were Warner Brothers, Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes cartoons.

  Billy Collins

  Brother, Creativity, Thinking

  7 Copy quote

• Eric Peters' music is at the top of what gets played around my house, in my car and while I am running.  I am a big fan.  He writes incredibly honest and poetic lyrics coupled with memorable pop melodies and I can think of no better combination.

  Jill Phillips

  Running, Memorable, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• Even the utmost good-will and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. We do not wish for Friends to feed and clothe our bodies-neighbors are kind enough for that-but to do the like office to our spirits.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Best Friend, Kindness, Office

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Journeys, Adventures & Life in Harmony with Nature – 6 Book Collection (Illustrated): Including Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada & Canoeing in the Wilderness - North American Highlands Series”, p.199, e-artnow

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Aretha with no goals, eternally single & one step soft of heaven/ let it be understood that she owns this melody along with her emotional diplomats & her earth & her musical secrets

  Bob Dylan

  Emotional, Goal, Heaven

  Bob Dylan (2008). “Tarantula”, p.1, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Jesus! it is the name which moves the harps of heaven to melody. Jesus! the life of all our joys. If there be one name more charming, more precious than another, it is this name. It is woven into the very warp and woof of our psalmody. Many of our hymns begin with it, and scarcely any, that are good for anything, end without it. It is the sum total of all delights. It is the music with which the bells of heaven ring; a song in a word; an ocean for comprehension, although a drop for brevity; a matchless oratorio in two syllables; a gathering up of the hallelujahs of eternity in five letters.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Song, Jesus, Ocean

  Charles Spurgeon (2016). “Morning and Evening”, p.158, Discovery House

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody.

  John Steinbeck

  Life, Thinking, Kind

  John Steinbeck (1952). “East of Eden, And, The Wayward Bus”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm more interested in melodic things. I think the biggest challenge when you go to play a solo is trying to invent a melody on the spot.

  Frank Zappa

  Thinking, Guitar, Play

  "The Guitar Handbook". Book by Ralph Denyer, p. 102, 2002.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Jazz took too much discipline. You have to come in at the right place, which is different than me singing the blues, where I can sing, 'Oh, baby,' if there's a pause in the melody. With jazz, you better leave that space open, or put in something real cool.

  Etta James

  Baby, Real, Space

  8 Copy quote

• And when one person taps out a beat, while another leads into the melody, or when three people discover a harmony they never knew existed, or a crowd joins in on a chorus as though to raise the ceiling a few feet higher, then they also know there is hope for the world.

  Pete Seeger

  Feet, People, Ceilings

  11 Copy quote

• The first thing I do is lay out that melody and figure out how it has to hold here and then finish to land here, because you know in advance you're going to want the melody to catch four things in the action.

  Danny Elfman

  Land, Four, Want

  7 Copy quote

• Melody is the essence of music.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Essence

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Friedrich Kerst, Henry Edward Krehbiel (1926). “Mozart: The Man and the Artist Revealed in His Own Words”, p.7, Courier Corporation

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• All them weird chords which don't mean a thing...you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance to

  Louis Armstrong

  Mean, Jazz, Remember

  24 Copy quote

• Animals can always read your vibration, and if you are intent on empowering your life, they will often gift you by making special melodies of sound to balance your chakras and tune up your body.

  Barbara Marciniak

  Animal, Empowering, Balance

  Barbara Marciniak (2010). “Path of Empowerment: New Pleiadian Wisdom for a World in Chaos”, p.88, New World Library

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• Language can still be an adventure if we remember that words can make a kind of melody. In novels, news stories, memoirs and even to-the-point memos, music is as important as meaning. In fact, music can drive home the meaning of words.

  Constance Hale

  Home, Adventure, News Stories

  "Writing for the ear" by Lisa Dusenbery, therumpus.net. June 13, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A song that sounds simple is just not that easy to write. One of the objectives of this record was to try and write melodies that continue to resonate...Everything that happens to you influences your writing...The writing process for me is pretty much always the same-it's a solitary experience...I have yet to write that one song that defines my career...Beck said he didn't believe in the theory of a song coming through you as if you were an open vessel. I agree with him to a certain extent.

  Sheryl Crow

  Song, Believe, Writing

  9 Copy quote

• There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. There is no way you can tell the child that if language had been a melody, he had mastered it and done well, but that since it was in fact a sense, he had botched it utterly.

  Annie Dillard

  Children, Long, Age

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.107, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

  9 Copy quote

  Show source