Quotes About Songwriting

I like to tinkle at my piano when I'm working out a new song - I just put my fingers down and see what comes out.

I kind of tend to write a lot of songs, so it's never too hard for me to finish an album; it's more about just getting enough songs that I really love.

You don't realize how beautiful an idea is until you do it with other people. There's this really shimmery, awesome thing when you start finishing a song - where the song just starts writing itself.

I'm very comfortable singing myself, first of all. Secondly, there's a certain disconnect when you write the song and you have someone else sing it for you. And it's kind of like a fakeness about it.

I've been writing a lot more folky, country type stuff. One of the reasons I wanted to write in the first place was because of Darrell Scott.

I always pray when I write songs that my spirit guides, or whoever is with me, inspiring me, would let me speak the truth.

I'm always working on new songs. With the technology these days, any idiot can record on Pro Tools on your laptop. All you have to do is plug a microphone into the input jack and anybody can have their own recording studio. So I'm always down in my basement, singing along to riffs or whoever I'm collaborating with.

I'd say, at the end of the day, you know, from a songwriting practice standpoint, you write songs to make yourself feel something true and validating, and cathartic, maybe, and then whoever responds to it is, like, out of your control.

Every single day I wrote a song, I was hoping somebody like Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean or whoever would record the song. It's tough to do because there are so many great songwriters in Nashville, and I was lucky enough to get some songs recorded before I got my record deal.

I usually think about titles. I'll hear somebody say something and write it down in my notes, and whenever we go into a room, somebody will start naming off titles, and whoever has the best title, that's what we start writing.

A lot of people say that 'the best songs fall into your lap' and that they're the easiest ones to write and take the shortest amount of time: I wholeheartedly disagree with that.

I criticized the whole American songwriting industry and the pop side of it and I was bitter about it. And I stepped back and thought 'Why are you bitter? You can't just stand there like every other indie musician and criticize this so-called 'generic' music when you're not doing anything to challenge that.'

The thing that I took away as an early fan from Bob Dylan was the storytelling aspects. He can tell some wicked stories.

When I'm writing a song, it's just me and the songwriters. Then when the song is done, there are publishers that hear it, then people in my management, then my wife and my boys and my friends, and if they're all lovin' it, it's kind of withstanding all the criticism I need.

There's a lot of reflection that goes on whenever I write a song - it's been a wild whirlwind last couple of years and there's a lot to talk about, and hopefully that's evident in the music.

But the classic Tenacious D songwriting is Jack or myself will have an idea - I might have a riff - and we'll improv. And once Jack's feeling it, we turn on the tape recorder and start jamming, improv on that riff, improv on those lyrics, and then go back and see if there's anything good in there.

I tend to write on an acoustic guitar or the piano. I have kind of a rule: if I can't sit down and play this and get the song over, I don't take it to the band, because most any good song, you can sit down and deliver it with a piano or a guitar.

Freddie and Brian tend to write the majority of the material.

When you're a songwriter and you click with someone, you tend to want to keep writing with that person.

I don't think we ever really think about it when we're doing it, because if you sort of go in with a plan of attack, it tends to take away the natural rhythm of songwriting.

Everything I write tends to come from my own personal experiences, or from people close to me that I'm singing about.

I was writing country songs, but I wasn't listening to country yet. I grew up on a farm in East Tennessee, so my roots are country, you know? But I didn't know where those songs came from or where they fit.

I feel like for me to write songs that I would be interested in as a listener, there has to be tension, and there has to be some kind of push and pull between reality and the potential of disaster.

You grow as a writer when you learn how to make songs flow from start to finish. That's the best song, when it's such a seamless process to get to this release at the chorus, this euphoric feeling. That's why the Beatles were so good - they did such a good job building so much tension in the beginning to this immaculate release, and then it ends.