A Quote by Alicia Witt

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. — © Alicia Witt
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.
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 feel that my brain works differently, and words come out differently, if I have a pencil in my hand, rather than if I have a keyboard. I tend to add more in the margins. I tend to elongate the sentences as I'm writing and editing, and there is just something about the feeling of writing longhand that I really love.
It's different from music because music is like going deep down into soul, like scooping out all the difficult, beautiful, messy stuff and putting it into songs. Writing is more like playing for me.
I've been writing a lot more, I believe, because of the Internet. I've been posting stuff that I've written and I've just been writing.
I've been working on my own music. I've been writing an album, stuff that's kind of personal to my own life.
I compose songs with a lot of simplicity because my school has been the streets, and people have been my books.
Even if I was playing the keyboard in an orchestra, or a radio jockey playing music at an FM station, I would have been the happiest person. So, for me, all this... being a music composer and getting appreciated for my craft... it is a bonus. It is God's gift.
I opened up my mind as far as playing music. I was at a Cody Chesnutt concert a few years ago, and a friend introduced me to him. We just started talking about music, and he asked me what I did. I said, "I have these songs and I'm kind of nervous to put them out, because I've just kind of been playing blues stuff, and playing other people's songs." He said, "You should just put them out there, man. Why not? It's just gonna bother you if you don't. The easiest thing to do is to just let it go." So I just took that with me.
As a kid, I was always into art at the same time as computers, and eventually I realised I was making more interesting stuff with my keyboard than with my hands. I really enjoyed modifying computer games more than playing them, so that got me into programming.
For me, the intent in a song is to sing it. I compose songs, meaning I'm writing words to be set to music; I'm intending it to not be recited. I'm a singer-songwriter, and I'm a poet, and there really isn't a contradiction, at least for me.
I have about 25,000 songs on my computer and play them mostly on shuffle, which means that the songs I've played the most are the songs that have been on my computer the longest.
At the beginning of my career, I saw an opportunity to forge new ground and focus on songwriting. Not many people were doing that at the time. Pretty much nobody. I thought I could write some really cool songs that would rise above all these dozens of genres that exist within dance music. I'd make it more about the songs. For the last 20 years, I've been sharing stories of my life through music. I've been writing songs about my life.
Imagine you are writing an email. You are in front of the computer. You are operating the computer, clicking a mouse and typing on a keyboard, but the message will be sent to a human over the internet. So you are working before the computer, but with a human behind the computer.
I've never been one to learn scales and do exercises. Maybe I'm lazy, but I just don't take to that kind of thing. Learning other people's songs is enjoyable, and my fingers tend to go to new places because I'm not playing my music, the stuff that comes naturally to me.
In terms of creativity, both are equally satisfying. Music album is for yourself, where you compose songs and stuff like that, and in films, you have a story, characters, and songs penned by someone else.
All the new songs have been written since the re-issue of Diamond Day. With my first royalties I got a Mac and a little mixer and a keyboard, figured out the basics of a music program, and gradually started to write and record the songs and the arrangements.
I've been writing songs since I was like six or seven. I've been writing poetry and short stories and stuff, but my first serious, serious song, I wrote when I was fourteen.
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