A Quote by Waylon Jennings

Country music isn't a guitar, it isn't a banjo, it isn't a melody, it isn't a lyric. It's a feeling.

Waylon Jennings

Quote Topics

Banjo Country Country Music Feeling Guitar Lyric Melody Music Music Is

Quote Author

Waylon Jennings
American - Musician
June 15, 1937 - February 13, 2002

The melody seems to have gone to the country. The country music seems to still have melody and interesting lyrics. But pop music, you've got to really listen hard to somebody who's doing a good melody and a good lyric.

Barry Manilow

Sometimes I get a lyric, and the lyric, you know, comes off the page, and goes into my brain and comes out with a melody. Other times, I may create a melody first.

Carole King

I love melody, and that's what I love about pop music. The words can become what they are through a special melody. I learned to play guitar by myself, and writing songs came with playing guitar, so the writing isn't one part and the music something else.

Anna Ternheim

I don't have some songwriting formula that I kinda go by. Usually it just comes by way of inspiration. Sometimes I'm inspired by a melody first and sometimes I'm inspired by a lyric. Typically, I'm inspired by an idea for a lyric and then after we get the lyric going then we write a melody to it.

Natalie Grant

I told my father I wanted to play the banjo, and so he saved the money and got ready to give me a banjo for my next birthday, and between that time and my birthday, I lost interest in the banjo and was playing guitar.

Jackson Browne

What else is the power of melody but the power of feeling? Music is the language of feeling; melody is audible feeling - feeling communicating itself.

Ludwig Feuerbach

It's very rare - and it does happen on occasion - where I'll take a piece of lyric and I'll just sit down and purposefully craft that melody around that lyric because I think the lyric is the wellspring for the song, without question.

Geddy Lee

Music is creation. In reggae the lyric, the music itself, arrangement, that vibe, such melody - everything within the music moves the people, understand?

Burning Spear

In country music the lyric is important and the melodies get a little more complex all the time, and you hear marvelous new singers who are interested in writing and interpreting a lyric and in all form of popular music.

Dinah Shore

Usually it's lyric first, but sometimes it's melody. And I carry a hand-held recorder everywhere I go so I can just hum or whistle a melody if one hits me. Sometimes it's both simultaneously - lyric and melody at the same time - those are a little confusing to me, but sometimes it comes in that form. I just feel like I have my own little radio station and sometimes the static clears and something beams in from out there.

Hal Ketchum

I first heard the banjo on the Beverly Hillbillies, and from then on I was banjo-conscious. But I didn't actually get one until my grandfather gave me one, almost by mistake. He knew I was playing a little bit of guitar. He saw a banjo at a flea market and bought it. I took it home with me and just never put it down. I was fifteen.

Bela Fleck

Sometimes, the best songs are the ones you write without any pen and paper or audio recording device or guitar in your hands. Because there's nothing between you and the melody; it's just a great lyric.

Jon Foreman

When we moved back to the US, folk music was all the rage. So I traded in my banjo for a guitar.

Michael Storm

When I write a song, I get the melody right first, and then hopefully I can back it up with a lyric that has to respect the melody.

Craig David

Usually now a song starts just in my head with a melody or a lyric idea coming first.Then typically I'll go to a guitar, unless it's a instrumental then I'll usually build it on a keyboard instrument.