Songwriting Quotes - Page 20

I was able to apply ukulele to whatever I'm trying to write. It's become part of songwriting for me, the knowledge I gained from hearing the melodies come out, and then applying that to guitar or vocals.

Eddie Vedder

Writing, Guitar, Ukulele

Source: www.twofeetthick.com

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I think the nature of songwriters is that they are philosophers, and philosophers have a bent towards poetry and songwriting, so I think that the two run around together. The nature of a songwriter could be philosophical. Looking for universal ideas, a way to say things, get the story across as a means of entertaining, provoking thought.

Tom T. Hall

Running, Philosophical, Mean

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Maybe I feel like I'm writing songs that don't need to be saved or made more interesting by endless overdubs and studio tricks...maybe - remember, where I am with songwriting I have never been before - sparkly guitars and overdubs I've done (and will do again - see instrumental record in above answer)

Robin Guthrie

Song, Writing, Guitar

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Anybody I'm in a band with can do what they do better than me. I'm a huge believer that I can play bass or whatever I bring to the table - producing, songwriting, orchestrating - and I can look at the other guys and say, "He's got that, he's got this, and I have this." It's a team thing.

Nikki Sixx

Team, Play, Guy

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I became very aware of what I was used to relying on, almost tricks. It's funny because I could feel myself creating a formula and sticking with it and I just told myself, 'That's not me, that's not really how I am, god forbid I have developed a formula - it's music; songwriting.' It's heretic, honestly, in the church of music, so I had to unwind a few tricks in order to get past it.

Zach Condon

Past, Order, Creating

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Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn't get some of that stuff out.

Dolly Parton

People, Feelings, Care

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I was always interested in science, and pre-med was arespectable thing to do while I ursued my songwriting.

Neil Diamond

Meds, Things To Do

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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

Dream, Writing, Thinking

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Writing is a way of living other lives. It is a way of expanding your life. It's not actually living a different life, it just means that you're hungry for life. There are so many things you want to do.

Etgar Keret

Writing, Mean, Way

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I'd like to do a song that I wrote today about our government's increasing infringement on our right to privacy, but the lyrics mysteriously disappeared from my guitar case.

Dan Piraro

Song, Writing, Government

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As I started writing about loss and grief, I was taking what felt unmanageable and using my songwriting, my sense of poetry and discipline, to try and make it manageable.

Rosanne Cash

Grief, Writing, Loss

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What I have in mind when I start to write could fit inside an acorn-an acorn, moreover, that rarely if ever grows into an oak. Write fiction and you relinquish reason. You start with an acorn and you end up with a mackerel.

Philip Roth

Writing, Mind, Acorns

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People think once you get famous and rich you move out of the public sphere and you have nothing left to write about. I've heard that - Bruce Springsteen was this real street boy, now he's got this big house. How does that compute? If you don't look at the material side of someone's life, if you look at more the emotional side, there's always a wealth of stuff to write about.

Paul McCartney

Real, Moving, Writing

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One night, Don Henley called, and I told him, 'I'm washing dishes and bike shorts.' He said, 'It's in the domestic exercises of life that one will find the biggest inspiration.' And he was right.

Sheryl Crow

Inspiration, Writing, Exercise

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I see God as a song-and-dance man. If I had my way, he'd be able to carry a tune, too. Preferably, one of mine.

Kevin Kline

Song, Writing, Men

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My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it's so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

Taylor Swift

Stories, My Own, My Own Life

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Opportunities may come along for you to convert something - something that exists into something that didn't yet. That might be the beginning of it.

Bob Dylan

Opportunity, May, Might

"Chronicles: Volume One". Book by Bob Dylan, 2004.

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A lot of my writing is not terribly civilized. Sometimes I listen to songs by very smart writers who assume that the world is a civil place with certain formalities that people follow, but I don't see things that way. My own experience tells me that life is not like that. That's why I write the way I do.

Suzanne Vega

Song, Smart, Writing

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You're never quite sure where the song is going, because you might not find the word to rhyme with the end of the line. You have to find associative meaning to get you there. So it's rather like doing a crossword puzzle backwards. A kind of strange, three-dimensional, abstract crossword puzzle.

Annie Lennox

Song, Three, Lines

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There's only two kinds of music: the blues and zippety doo-dah.

Townes Van Zandt

Two, Kind

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Suzanne had a room on a waterfront street in the port of Montreal. Everything happened just as it was put down. She was the wife of a man I knew. Her hospitality was immaculate. Some months later I sang it for Judy Collins over the telephone. The publishing rights were lost in New York City, but it is probably appropriate that I don't own this song. Just the other day I heard some people singing it on a ship in the Caspian Sea.

Leonard Cohen

Song, New York, Men

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The gateway to freedom...was somewhere close to New Orleans where most Africans were sorted through and sold. I had driven through New Orleans on tour and I'd been told my great grandfather had lived way back up in the woods among the evergreens in a log cabin. I revived the era with a song about a coloured boy named Johnny B. Goode. My first thought was to make his life follow as my own had come along, but I thought it would seem biased to white fans to say 'coloured boy' and changed it to 'country boy'.

Chuck Berry

Country, Song, Boys

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I'm fascinated by America...it's so odd.

John Prine

America, Odd, Fascinated

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All of a sudden there's a song - there in your hotel room playing your guitar - and you write it, and two or three years later it will come true. It keeps you on your toes.

Townes Van Zandt

Song, Writing, Guitar

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I would sooner be robbed by a fan than a company. The fan may be broke and have but one choice. There is no excuse for the way the "songwriter" is robbed by everyone from the record company to the broadcaster, by the pure bottom line, greed. If it continues, sadly, in time, the music will suffer. It takes many many years to learn how to write a song properly. Songwriters will be forced to hit the road in order to make a decent living and, in my opinion, these two careers are related but not compatible.

Mickey Newbury

Song, Writing, Order

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