A Quote by David Longstreth
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.
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There are certain choices you make as a songwriter, based on vowel sounds and melody and chord changes.
We spent a long time learning the craft of songwriting, Roger Glover and I, for a few years before we joined Deep Purple. You learn about the percussive value of words, and you learn about rhyme and meter. You learn that you can't transform a poem into a song lyric, mostly because the spoken shape of words is different than the sung shape of words. You wouldn't use the vowel 'U' or the vowel sound 'ooo' for a high note for example, its very difficult.
So in that way, fame has become a weirder thing to go after, but the thing about me is I've never been after fame. That sounds cliché, but it's true. I think fame sounds uncomfortable to me, but being able to like write this book and make my living doing very exciting, creative stuff sounds really amazing. It has been really amazing.
Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants.
When someone like Kurt Cobain or Jack White comes out, they didn't go, "He sounds just like Muddy Waters," did they? They just said, "He's great, he sounds like him." When women come out and men write about them, they tend to write about them in a way that other men can understand, which sometimes can seem a bit patronizing.
I'm usually really drawn to a song, and I know it would be good to cover if it sounds like something that I could write, or I wished I could write. Sometimes a writer just sounds like they're in your head, and that is really cool for me.
I have a dialogue coach who helps me out with some of the more tricky Chicago vowel sounds.
Lately I haven't been able to write for the guitar - it'll usually start out with a melody on the bass, and I'll layer vocals. I just can't really physically hear the guitar anymore, so I'll just go into GarageBand and play around with the keys. I'll sit on a melody or some lyrics for a really long time and just play with it.
Some people with autism who don't talk, all they hear are vowel sounds. Like if I said 'cup,' they might just hear 'uh.'
Hunter can write a melody and stuff like that, but his forte is lyrics. He can write a serviceable melody to hang his lyrics on, and sometimes he comes up with something really nice.
When I have just sat down and tried to write the lyrics of a song, usually about half of it sounds like bullshit. I just have to go away from something and come back to it again later. I do a lot of editing and switching around and putting little pieces together to get the right mood and personality, and it takes me forever to get a song finished.
Vowels were something else. He didn't like them and they didn't like him. There were only five of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. Why, you could go through twenty words without bumping into some of the shyer consonants, but it seemed as if you couldn't tiptoe past a syllable without waking up a vowel. Consonants, you know pretty much where you stood, but you could never trust a vowel.
I have a tape recorder, and I just sing into it. I like to write that way. Sometimes I'll just get melodic ideas, and then I'll go home and sit down and add the lyrics. Or sometimes I'll get a lyric idea that I love. Usually it's pretty combined. Usually I get some kind of a lyrical concept and a melody and work with that.
Sometimes when you're making songs you just make sounds, and the sounds slowly mutate and evolve into actual words that have meaning.
I love a great melody and wonderful lyrics that speak from the heart, and my music has that and speaks about it; but there's just something that was really raw and energetic about the early House music. It's hard to describe. It's like you had to go to these parties where the stuff was being played on these huge sound systems to really feel it.
I don't really have a set-in-stone process or formula. Sometimes the melody is there and I have to chase down the lyrics. Sometimes, the song is there and I have to make the melody fit. What I've learned so far about songwriting is that I can't force a song. If I try to do that, it's hollow, and people know a hollow song when they hear it. It's the song they stop listening to and forget about. I'd prefer not to write those kinds of songs.
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