A Quote by John Darnielle

The studio's a collaborative environment. I just try to let people bring their own ideas to the songs and see what happens. — © John Darnielle
The studio's a collaborative environment. I just try to let people bring their own ideas to the songs and see what happens.
My own personal tastes don't really have an effect on whether song is a parody target or not. But having said that, I try to pick songs that I actually like because I realize that I have to live with these songs for a long time, from when I'm working on them in the studio to possibly playing them onstage for the rest of my life. So I try not to pick songs that I know would drive me crazy.
Try saying this silently to everyone and everything you see for thirty days and see what happens to your own soul: I wish you happiness now and whatever will bring happiness to you in the future.
Just to be part of a process where you hit no professional speed bumps and you're just sort of going on and on. I'm surrounded by these people that are all so collaborative and all bring things of their own to the process. For them to be alive in the scenes so you don't have to worry.
My goal is to create a therapy of ideas, to try to bring in new ideas so that we can see the same old problems differently.
I try to create a very casual working place, where everybody - down to production assistants - can throw out ideas and not feel intimidated. When it becomes a collaborative environment, it becomes a small family, and everybody becomes invested.
A lot of people have said 'people should see you work in the studio,' because a lot of people don't realize I'm an actual engineer. I don't walk in and have some guy grab the board. I have my own studio and soldered every wire in the studio.
I respect religion and all people's ideas of it. I think everyone should be able to do whatever they want to do with their own life. I just don't particularly like it when people try and force their ideas on others.
No one would bring their horse into a studio, because they don't want to bring their prized animals into an environment where they wouldn't be comfortable or where they might panic and hurt themselves.
I hate studios. A studio is a black hole. I never use a studio to work. It's very artificial to go to a studio to get new ideas. You have to get new ideas from life, not from the studio. Then you go to the studio to realize the idea.
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.
It's a really weird mindset to kind of try to take my mentality on the basketball court and bring it here on to the golf course. I don't want to have too high of expectations on, like, each hole, just try to enjoy the process, but hopefully get out to a good start tomorrow and be in the conversation and see what happens.
I could be inspired by something I see or something I hear and write down or send to a friend or a writer or whether I have instrumental tracks or just a couple chords recorded on my phone. If I have a couple sessions set, I'll go into the studio with the people I'm lucky enough to call my friends because I feel like I can talk to them and then suddenly our conversations turn into these songs you hear on the radio. I still don't understand how it happens but I talk about my experiences and my situations and everything and then they turn into these amazing pop songs.
Men who are offenders of street harassment and women who experience street harassment can walk by and feel something about it, because it's out there in the environment where the harassment actually happens. So it's a lot more powerful than an oil painting that's stuck in a gallery or under my bed or in my studio where only a couple of eyes are going to see it, as opposed to it being in an environment where it could possibly effect a change.
I'm always interested in hearing how other people read and react to my songs. I hadn't thought of it in just that way. One of the things I love about doing things that are creative is that I feel like it's my right as an artist not to be affected by the reactions of those people that are going to hear my songs. But I also feel like it's the right of the people hearing them to have their own interpretations of what these songs mean. Sometimes people will see things that I don't see.
Drop all ideas of achieving in meditation, just do it naturally; what happens happens on its own. One day, effortlessly, everything starts happening by itself.
I had to learn how to work in a studio at first because it's a totally different creative environment to the 'bedroom recordings' I'd done before, where I could translate my own ideas without having to explain them to anyone.
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