A Quote by Chris Isaak

I never set out to write a certain kind of song, I just play my guitar and see if I catch something. — © Chris Isaak
I never set out to write a certain kind of song, I just play my guitar and see if I catch something.
I use music as a tool for my own personal sanity, one might say. After a long day or something, I can always come home and sit down and play a song, or write a song, just relax and kind of space out with my guitar.
Yeah. I'm amateurish. I can play enough to write a song, or strum on a little guitar to write out a song. But, I don't play well at all. I wouldn't even attempt for a second to play in public.
I always try to write the best song I can in the moment, and those songs are often going to end up on Death Cab for Cutie records. I don't set out to write a solo song or write a band song. I just write, and where that songs ends up is kind of TBD.
I don't play a lot of instruments so when it comes to the song writing process I don't have a lot to do with that. A lot of times it's just acoustic guitar and a small riff that produces a song. Ultimately you want to write a song that people are going to enjoy and that you love to play, most importantly you have to write it for yourself first.
I can't try to write a song - songs come out of me. I have to play the guitar and if I jam a song, boom! That's a song.
I play piano and guitar and I do write my own stuff so to a certain extent I know what I want to do in regards to music. But I'm still finding out what kind of music is my favourite kind to listen to, never mind do myself so I've got a lot of time to find out myself and develop myself as an artist.
I think a "song" is, like, just play it on the guitar and sing it. You look out and see thousands of covers of "Animal" for example, so you think, "That was probably a pretty good song, because people feel like it's satisfying to just play it with one instrument accompanying it."
I tend to write on an acoustic guitar or the piano. I have kind of a rule: if I can't sit down and play this and get the song over, I don't take it to the band, because most any good song, you can sit down and deliver it with a piano or a guitar.
The first song I learned on the guitar was a Kenny Chesney song called 'What I Need to Do'; it was just an easy song to play... and it was really cool to see that come full-circle a few years later and have him record a song that I was part of.
Well, it grow together. It's like, first time I try to write a song is the first time I try to play the guitar. And so I can write a song without the guitar. But it really grow together. I really like stay with my guitar. But it just happen, is the inspiration come through man. Because, I personally, it look like, could I write a whole heap a tune, it look like. But I pick special tune to write. Cause a man can think of plenty things. Yuh know wah ah mean.
If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.
Unfortunately, most of the songs that I write I don't write them with guitar in mind. I just write it as a song and that was probably one of the ones that left an opening for it. The song's all right, I wouldn't choose to sing it now.
Writing a song is like - you're writing a song all the time. It's just when it pops out. It's been there all the time. It's not something that suddenly you do it. It's always there. Suddenly, it's in the right mixture inside you to come out. Usually when you're writing on the piano or a guitar, you don't write in lyrics, on their own. To me it's very boring.
I'm not sure if it's because I'm older and I'm thinking about family more, but I'm trying to set up this thing where I can play in one city for a month, and then write music for a couple months, then play in another city for a month, write music for a month. Just so it's not these two schizophrenic, Jekyll and Hyde kind of things; you don't have to be this monster. You get inspired and you can go write one song from that, and then you go back and play a few shows. If I could've done that in the 90s, I would have.
Not that I play guitar anywhere near as well as she sings, but I think I have always had a tendency to play solos the same way, in emotional relation to the structure of the song. I choose simple lines, and only play what seems emotionally relevant, and often express that emotion in time, that is in play or resistance to the set time of the song.
I can't remember the first song I learned to play on bass, but the first song I learned to play on guitar was 'For Your Love' by the Yardbirds. That kind of was the beginning for me. I thought it was a great song and I loved the open chord progression at the beginning of that song.
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