A Quote by Dexter Gordon

When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it's composition. — © Dexter Gordon
When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it's composition.
When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it's composition. If you don't understand what it's about, you're depriving yourself of being really able to communicate this poem.
When I sing a tune, the lyrics are important to me. Most of the standard lyrics I know well. And as soon as I hear an arrangement, I get ideas, kind of like blowing a horn. I guess I never sing a tune the same way twice.
I never write a tune before the lyrics. I get the lyrics and then I write around them. Some people write music and the lyrics come along and they say, 'Oh yeah, I've got something to fit that.' If that's the way people write songs, I feel like you might as well just go to the supermarket.
TV is tricky. You can do some stuff and people will tune out and never tune back in. It's sort of like putting a bad taste in somebody's mouth. Some people may not ever tune in again. And then there's some people that will tune in just to tune in and see what's gon' happen.
My songs are all about celebrating poignant music. While some of them focus on fun and revelry, they are fortunately backed by powerful lyrics. Put together, the lyrics, tune and my voice strive to take the songs to the next level.
Every song has a different genesis, or feeling. Usually the lyrics, I don't really know what it's all about, I just kinda do it. I mean, there's a combination of, like you're saying, that kind of lyrics about commitment or vaguely relationship lyrics mixed with jokey 90s Beck-style non-sequiturs and stuff.
When Obama was inaugurated, he and his team had an insight - though whether the insight was conscious or not I don't know. But it was this: The TARP $700 billion price tag was a new kind of model.
Lyrics is the face of any song. The combination of composition, lyrics and singing is what makes a song a song.
In some exquisite critical hints on "Eurythmy," Goethe remarks, "that the best composition in pictures is that which, observing the most delicate laws of harmony, so arranges the objects that they by their position tell their own story." And the rule thus applied to composition in painting applies no less to composition in literature.
I love great lyrics, and I love the way it could shape a tune into a very unpredictable one, and I also like taking a great melody and putting lyrics into it.
I mean, there's an aspect I've always said that is - it's, you know, it's not poetry but it's kind of like it. It's not song lyrics but it's kind of like song lyrics. It's not rap but it's kind of like rap. And it's not stand-up comedy but it is kind of like stand-up comedy. It's all those things together.
Chance in music doesn't have to involve the I Ching or rolling dice or throwing yarrow stalks. It can involve an out-of-tune guitar, or other impossible-to-replicate moments of awkwardness - even more so than an awkward, out-of-tune live performance, because there's something incredible about the way that an out-of-tune guitar becomes part of the song on a record. I won't be precious and say it's part of the composition - that's nonsensica l - but chance occurrences are so crucial to what's distinctive. It's the fingerprints all over so many of these recordings.
I set myself a rule before I actually write a tune to the lyrics, and the rule is that I've got to take the lyrics on to a level of understanding before I can actually write music to them. What I'm doing is interpretation. If I don't write the lyrics, therefore I must interpret them to the best of my ability. So my rule is that I must understand it, but I don't necessarily have to accept.
There's no difference between lyrics and poetry. Words are words. The only difference is the people who are in academic positions and call themselves poets and have an academic stance. They've got something to lose if they say it's all poetry; if there's not music to it, and you have to wear a certain kind of checkered shirt or something like that. It's all the same. Lyrics are lyrics, poetry is poetry, lyrics are poetry, and poetry is lyrics. They are interchangeable to me.
The Smiths hasn't been equaled. That goes for the composition of the songs, the lyrics, and the performance.
The lyrics are always the last thing I do. I always have a recording of basic tracks and maybe some of the lead work. I'll sit back and listen to it, and I'll just concentrate on what kind of feeling it gives me. My goal writing the lyrics is to not disrupt that feeling.
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