Top 1200 Music Writing Quotes & Sayings - Page 19

Before I start, I create a set list that I listen to while I'm writing. For 'Intimate Apparel,' I loaded Erik Satie, Scott Joplin, klezmer music, and the American jazz performer and composer Reginald Robinson.

I can work a lot faster when I'm writing a screenplay than when I'm writing a play because, if I'm having a problem with a scene or something, I can just be writing it in a way where there's no dialogue, or find a way to make sound do the work that I want to do or a close-up do the work that I need to do.

A huge part of my writing process is listening to music as I write, almost creating an unofficial soundtrack to the film I'm working on, a sort of playlist. But the specific songs change rapidly as I write.

Whether it's films or painting or music or writing a book, the greatest experience is being able to express yourself and what you've gone through, trying to figure out a way to make it into something that's artistic that people can connect with.

Even when I was studying piano, I always preferred to play around with my own improvisations rather than do my studies. So I've always been interested in writing music from a very early age.

The only way to do it is to do it: by writing, writing, writing.

My dad loved music, and he passed that on to me. I fell in love with hip-hop the first time I heard it. I started writing raps at a young age. I wasn't a Christian at that point. I thought I was, but I don't think I was, looking back on it.

I think it's important to really press on with the song writing and just go with it. There's no code, there's no craft... it's just let yourself shine through your music. If it's meant to be loved and heard, it'll happen.

I've always had music in my life. When I went running, I would put music on. Even before games I'd have music on.

I find that when you grow and evolve with music, the music understands you, and vice versa - whether or not the creator of that music knows.

I started out doing music videos and photography, and I always loved writing. Filmmaking seemed to be a good compilation of all these skills in a way that allowed me to tell a story “greater than the sum of its parts.”

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

I just play music by listening and responding, so I don't know anything about writing songs or arranging and all of this stuff. You know, it's in my head, but I don't know how to get it out.

There are two kinds of music: good music and bad music. Both are and will continue to co-exist.

Music is very abstract. When we talk about music, we're not discussing the music itself but rather how we react to it.

I don't love performing, because it's nerve-racking and it's time - consuming to rehearse a whole set - and my time can often be better served writing music and just making it and putting it out.

Music is magic. Music does s**t that money could never do. Music unites nations and stops wars.

Irving Berlin was the greatest songwriter of all time. I was in awe of him. But his music wasn't my music. My music was the blues.

Music is my religion. Music is the only thing that has never failed me. People let you down, music won't.

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 knew I wanted to be in music, but I didn't know my role, so I did everything from interning at Rolling Stone to writing heavy metal fanzines to playing in a high-school band, and I think all those things probably helped in a way.

It is the responsibility of music composers to add some classical music elements into their songs to make the music genre popular.

Dancing used to be my one and only thing and then I started getting into poetry and writing stories and then music just ended up taking over my life and it's been amazing.

Millions of people are joined in the knowledge that writing brings insight and calm in the same way that prayer, meditation, or a long walk in the woods does. They have discovered that writing allows the racing mind to move at the pace of pen and paper or the pace of typing on the waiting screen - that journal writing is a spiritual practice.

I don't know how it is for people who write fiction or literature, but for me, when I'm writing music, especially with this album, I felt compelled to hold up my end of the conversation. I want people to connect deeper with it.

May not music be described as the mathematics of the sense, mathematics as music of the reason? The musician feels mathematics, the mathematician thinks music: music the dream, mathematics the working life.

I can be completely indulgent and spend as many hours and days or weeks as I like on one thing. Writing music and sitting in my studio, just pottering with ideas, it's a lot more personal and creative for me, I don't feel restricted.

I got tired of depending on other people, and I had this strong desire to make music of my own. I decided to start writing my own tunes and just see what could happen.

I began observing, making paintings of my surroundings, taking a vow of silence, listening, composing music, writing, and making time for formal education. Then I started telling stories.

To me, there's two kinds of music these days. There's ephemeral music, and there's music that has lasting power and depth.

Each one of us had a little story to tell and each recording was based on that. Lou played all of the music but we both sort of kicked around some cords during the writing phase.

I wouldn't have known when I was a teenager that when I was coming up to being a sixty-year-old woman that I'd be making music, I'd be recording music, talking about music, and incorporating my views on the world into the music-making. So it's a very rarefied place to be, and I'm very grateful for that.

I love how music can create an audiovisual experience. To me, some of the best music is the music that does that.

Music is the medium... how you use the music is different. Everyone use music to a positive light and effect. So it really depends on the individual and one's outlook. My music depicts life in general and the things that I see and the things that influence me, and such forth.

There are artists that are using computers in all genres - Kendrick Lamar's music is electronic-made, and Taylor Swift is the same thing. There's a lot of pop music, underground music, and music for films made with computers. In that sense, it's not going to go away.

I always write my novels with music (I don't listened to the music seriously.) Music seems to encourage me.

I was the audience he wanted to reach. Gram Parsons' writing brought his own personal generations poetry and vision into the very traditional format of country music, and he came up with something completely different

Dante Alighieri is a universal poet, and great creators, they are writing for everybody always. Every single verse is very moving, and the beauty - if we don't understand, we just stay listening to the sound and it's like hearing music.

When I was a teenager, I really didn't like loud rock music. I listened to jazz and blues and folk music. I've always preferred acoustic music. And it was only, I suppose, by the time Jethro Tull was getting underway that we did let the music begin to have a harder edge, in particular with the electric guitar being alongside the flute.

I believe that filmmakers have to internalize the story and subtext so well that all of the departments can start to speak to each other - that music can speak to cinematography can speak to writing and back again.

I'm not as aware of categories in music as some people are. To me it's just music. I'm interested in all kinds of music.

Poetry is music though, unfortunately, not all music is poetry. Because music has other carriers to take its message - beats, lyrics, singers, bass players - anyone in music can rise to make a major statement but in poetry there are only words to do the work. And they do sometimes have to sweat.

The 'music industry' is not a term I use. I tend to concentrate on music, and the music business is something different.

When I'm writing a play I hear it like music. I use the same indications that a composer does for duration. There's a difference, I tell my students, between a semi-colon and a period. A difference in duration. And we have all these wonderful things, we use commas and underlining and all the wonderful punctuation things we can use in the same way a composer uses them in music. And we can indicate, as specifically as a composer, the way we want our piece to sound.

I haven't had trouble with writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, cliched writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn't have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments.

People ask me all the time which I would prefer doing more, but I honestly can't say. When I'm filming, I'm like, 'No, this is my favorite,' and when I'm writing music and recording and performing, it's like, 'This is definitely it.'

So, when you divide the world into music lovers, music fans and then those people who are just very casual about their music, it's wallpaper to them, it's elevator music, it's just the thing that's playing in the background that helps them through their day.

I'd probably like to get into acting - I've got lots of things that I could do, but at the moment it's just music, music, music.

When I was a kid, we weren't really supposed to listen to secular music. But one day, I found a 'Led Zeppelin IV' cassette tape in the garage, and it was just amazing-sounding music, not like anything I'd heard before. I remember thinking: 'Well, if God created music, why is his music in church not as good as this?'

As I'm writing a song, I focus on the music and try not to let my mind wander too much, but if I do think of any visual moments or references that I think would connect nicely, I'll make a note of it.

I'm still trying to do me and just make good music and quality music, music that you can feel.

Just going through a lot in my life, becoming more confident in myself, writing my own music and just really getting in the studio and just doing it.

A lot of crime fiction writing is also lazy. Personality is supposed to be shown by the protagonist's taste in music, or we're told that the hero looks like the young Cary Grant. Film is the medium these writers are looking for.

You have to get past the idea that music has to be one thing. To be alive in America is to hear all kinds of music constantly: radio, records, churches, cats on the street, everywhere music. And with records, the whole history of music is open to everyone who wants to hear it.

Next to meditation is music, soulful music, the music that stirs and elevates our aspiring consciousness.

I started to music when I was about 19 years old. Most people that do music, they get training, or they develop themselves before they let their music out. For myself, I was actually developing myself and putting my music out at the same time.

I'm a provincial. I live very much like a hermit: reading, listening to music, working in the cutting room, writing, commercial work - which doesn't take up that much time.

I can't pretend that I don't subscribe to Internet music culture in that I discover new music and old music simultaneously.

Critics stopped being relevant when they stopped writing to inform and contextualize, and when they started writing to signal who they are, to display their identity by their stance on what they are writing about. Criticism should never be about the critic, but thats what it has become, and that’s why no one cares about them anymore.

Music begins where words leave off. Music expresses the inexpressible. If there is a Kingdom of Heaven, it lies in music.