A Quote by Tom Waits

For a songwriter, you dont really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes.

Tom Waits

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Go Learn Listening Really School Songwriter Songwriting Tunes

Quote Author

Tom Waits
American - Musician
Born: December 7, 1949

For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.

Tom Waits

I really wanted to focus on my songwriting, or songwriting with other people. I wanted to go learn from other people who were really good at the classic, more traditional idea of songwriting.

Mikky Ekko

To try and learn how to be a singer, a really good guitar player, a really good pianist, it's always lagged a bit behind learning to be the best songwriter I could possibly be because songwriting comes naturally to me.

Van Hunt

School doesn't teach you much. School teaches you how to follow directions, that's what school is for. And in life, not necessarily following directions helps you get certain places - because you go to the right school you can learn the right things, and you go to the wrong school you can learn the wrong things, so it just all depends. But school doesn't really teach you how to interact with people properly, you learn that outside of school.

Vince Staples

I just hated school. I dont like to learn. Dont teach me anything!

Christopher Mintz-Plasse

You can go out and find ways to make your own record and get it out there now. If you really want to, you can be heard. Keep things simple. Learn to go out and play solo. That's a really really good thing to learn, if you're a singer-songwriter. Don't be dependent on a band because you may not always be able to afford one.

Steve Earle

I'm more critical of my songwriting than anybody, but I've worked really hard in the last five to 10 years to improve. I didn't take it all that seriously when I started. It was a little bit of a stigma to being a songwriter or a folkie back then. I did a lot of send-ups of sensitive singer-songwriter stuff when I was starting out, which limited my development as a songwriter in a way. I wasn't really fully given license to explore that until the mid-90s. I'm still working on it; I'm a little bit of a late bloomer.

Beck

There's a standard of songwriting that, when you start immersing yourself in those types of songs, it raises your own bar as a songwriter. There's also simplicity in the songwriting. It's much harder to be simple than it is to be complicated.

Sinead O'Connor

I always was songwriting in high school, writing songs while I was supposed to be listening to the teacher.

Kate Pierson

I never read in school. I got really bad grades-D's and F's and C's in some classes, and A's and B's in other classes. In the second week of the 11th grade, I just quit. When I was in school, it was really difficult. Almost everything I learned, I had to learn by listening. My report cards always said that I was not living up to my potential.

Cher

I went to a boarding school when I was 13, and it was a very arty school, so there was an opportunity for a lot more. I joined a band and so on. We would do concerts at school, and I would play cover tunes and thought, 'This is really great.'

Teddy Thompson

Lessons didn't really work out for me, so I went to the old school, listening to records and learning what I wanted to learn.

Dimebag Darrell

I'm doing more deep listening, which is part of the role or job of the songwriter. I think with a lot of songwriting, songs sing themselves to you tonally and also lyrically. And it's not necessarily your own visual memories that are writing the song. It's like there are words that you can catch out there and you have to be able to see and hear them.

Mirah

I went to a state school in south-west London. It was a brilliant school for the students that really wanted to learn. But it was not a great school for the students that - in my opinion - didn't want to learn, i.e. me. I really wasn't interested by it.

Finn Cole

I feel lucky in that I don't really have to go to college to study something job-specific. I just want to go to learn about what is interesting to me and learn about the classes that you don't really get to take in high school because you have to take the basics.