A Quote by Koren Zailckas

For the first month of school, writing is its own upper. Pounding on my computer keys feels like playing the piano, like arranging words into harmony that sings back to me.
I started playing piano when I was eight, and I went on to study piano in school, so I have a background in classical piano and studied composition in school. Writing music came later.
I love playing all kinds of roles. I hope it doesn’t sound too pretentious, but I always feel human nature is like a piano, and there are 88 keys, and there are some white keys and some black keys, and each character is a different chord on the piano. Basically, I hope that in the course of my life, I will have played all 88 keys. So, I’ll have played heroes and villains and princes and kings and warriors and beggars and thieves and lovers and fathers and wizards and all of those things. That is why I’m an actor… I love studying people.
Yeah, I started on YouTube. I posted videos every Friday and wrote new songs every week. Back then, I was in a very vulnerable place with all my fans. Now in a pandemic, it feels like I'm going back to my roots and playing on my OG piano that I played when I first started.
I started writing songs when I was real young, when I was 3 years old. The piano spoke to me - I don't remember when I wasn't playing piano. My second grade talent show was the first time I performed my own thing. I dressed up as Dracula and played a song called 'Monster Rock' that I wrote. And I won.
I edit as I go. Especially when I go to commit it to paper. I prefer a typewriter even to a computer. I don't like it. There's no noise on the computer. I like a typewriter because I am such a slow typist. I edit as I am committing it to paper. I like to see the words before me and I go, "Yeah, that's it." They appear before me and they fit. I don't usually take large parts out. If I get stuck early in a song, I take it as a sign that I might be writing the chorus and don't know it. Sometimes,you gotta step back a little bit and take a look at what you're doing.
In stand-up, you do need to be having fun up there, like Richard Pryor said, but you have to know yourself well, too... You start learning, and it's like playing a piano. You know exactly what keys to stroke, 'cause really, with comedy, you're, like, fiddling with people's souls.
To me, writing and composing are much more like painting, about colors and brushes; I don't use a computer when I write, and I don't use a piano. I'm at a desk writing, and it's very broad strokes and notes as colors on a palette.
I decided at school that the only sensible way to make a living by arranging words in a pleasing order was by working on newspapers, because you got paid at the end of the week or the end of the month.
Words Like Freedom There are words like Freedom Sweet and wonderful to say. On my heartstrings freedom sings All day everyday. There are words like Liberty That almost make me cry. If you had known what I know You would know why.
Ever since high school I've been writing in a spiral notebook, in pencil. Everything looks too polished on a computer when you start writing, and I can't really see it. I feel like the words are much more naked in pencil, on a notebook.
I can't read music. Instead, I'd do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize - out of like 5,000 kids! The judges were like, 'Very interesting interpretation!' I thought I was playing it right.
I'm really such a bumbler! Writing fiction is like arranging furniture in a dark room. I can't see what I'm doing. I grope for the right words. I bump against the wrong words and stumble and stub my toe and curse and keep trying to guess what belongs in the space.
The first time I go out to Nashville, ever (at this point I had only heard the rumors about what it's like) I had three writing sessions set up. The first two canceled on me. I was kind of pissed off at that point. So I just went back to my hotel room and started writing. And even though I've been to L.A. and experienced a lot of things, at the end of the day I just start to feel like I'm playing acoustically at the first bar I ever played at.
I like writing on piano and a computer, and a lot of 'Plans' came out of samples and vocal lines.
Music for me is a bit more spiritual. There are moments when I'm sitting at my piano, and I don't realize that I've been playing for two hours - it feels like divine power. I know it's so cheesy.
I compose my own stuff. I've been writing songs with words. I've been playing more on the keyboard because I can transpose it to sheet music on the computer.
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