A Quote by James Mercer
I most enjoy sitting down with the acoustic guitar and just fiddling around and trying to come up with something like a hook or some sort of melodic line. That's something that I do habitually.
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I enjoy the song writing process more than anything. It's what I like the most, just sitting in my room with guitar or at the piano or something. Just making something up, something that's not there, that suddenly is there.
I sit around and play acoustic guitar - usually acoustic, sometimes electric, occasionally piano, but more often guitar, just trying to come up with tunes. Ideas kind of pop into your head.
Sitting around home I mostly play acoustic. I've got seven or eight guitars of various sorts, including a baritone. Sometimes at home, because a guitar is just lying around, that's the guitar I pick up rather than actually choosing something. I try to plan ahead for my laziness by leaving interesting things scattered about. If I leave a baritone guitar lying around, that's the one I'll pick up, and I'll start writing baritoney things.
I'm pursuing soundtrack work in the southern California area and down the line I plan to make a moody, intense acoustic album. Not all acoustic, but an acoustic - oriented guitar record that I've already written most of the material for.
These days I keep a journal, so I'm constantly sketching down my thoughts, or lines that come to me...ideas for songs. And then when I have a moment to myself, I'll sit down with my guitar and open my journal, and start kind of massaging things together, and see if a song takes shape. Or sometimes, I'll just be hanging out with my guitar and come up with a chord progression or a lick, and that'll sort of sit around for a while waiting to marry itself to some words. So it's sort of haphazard and it's like...junk culture. I go around finding shiny objects and I glue them together laughs.
It's important to keep your creative muscle strong and working. My most inspiring method though is just sitting down with an acoustic guitar and coming up with melodies. It's what I've been doing nice I was nine years old.
I suppose ever since I was about 14, I remember listening to "Sgt. Pepper's," and I remember thinking, "how do you possibly write songs like that?" I remember starting to try and write songs around that age, but just sitting around with an acoustic guitar, and try to come up with ideas for songs, and that's just what I've done ever since. I just never really stopped doing that, I suppose.
I think that's what we're all trying to do as actors, is create some sort of passion from people and allow them to have something to really care about and something they enjoy and look forward to on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, whatever it is, where you get to sit down and escape.
The acoustic guitar is my first love, I've been playing since I was a kid, and I feel the most at home when I'm sitting with an acoustic, I just love it so much. It changes my heart. I love the vibration and frequencies and the resonance.
I usually start with a guitar riff or some little pattern of chords, and then I kind of go from there. Usually my lyrics are the last thing to go onto a song. For years and years I only ever did instrumental, so I'm still trying to get confidant with my lyrics and find the right balance. I'll generally get inspired from the music. I'll have a guitar line, and then I'll have a melody line, and I hook the lyrics up to fit that rhythm. So, my lyrics to tend be very rhythmic as well. They work with the music rather than the music works around them.
All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you.If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens.But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction.
I think its just important to do something. Some sort of exercise. I get asked this a lot. It's important to do something you enjoy, and something that is useful for yourself. You get far more enjoyment out of something you like to do, so you're more likely to stick with it.
As a producer, when I'm trying to make something soft, I start with a slow tempo. Then after that, it would be straight to acoustic guitar and vocals, or I'm going to go strings and just piano.
There's two or three kids out there trying to make good music, and the rest of them sound like it's been strained through some kind of white toast or something. It all sounds just too neat and perfect, with no surprise to it at all. No story, no nothing. It's like building cars, like an assembly line. It doesn't sound like anything that came from a guitar.
I have so much music that I do. Just like how a visual artist is always sketching something but they might not share it, I'm always writing songs or coming up with melodic lines on piano or guitar. It's therapy. It's always happening.
Most of the time I sit down with my guitar or at the piano, and I play for awhile until I get a new riff or groove that I like a lot. Then I'll concentrate on building around that line of thought by adding words and textures. At first I'm only trying to please myself, and hopefully what I like will appeal to others.
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