Quotes About Inspiration

Chet Faker's a reference to the late Chet Baker. I'm a big fan of his vocal style; it's quite fragile and soft, and that was a style I wanted to take on.

Usually when we go in to cut demos, one of us will lay down some mumbling sort of stuff for the vocal melodies because the lyrics don't come until later.

'Fix' - definitely, when I first heard the demo of that song, it was kind of intimidating because of the high falsetto parts. It was one of those things. I got into the vocal booth and wasn't sure I could do it or how well I could do it. There was something about the song that I really took to.

When I listen to a song, I don't say, 'Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.' I'm thinking, 'That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.'

I can sample Blink-182 but put an African vocal sample in there.

Toplines usually suck. I'll send a song to a band or artist whose entire body of work I love and I'll ask them to do a vocal for one of my songs and I'll get it back and I'll hate it so much. It might have to do with my possessiveness over my music.

With vocal and choral music, first and foremost, it's the text. Not only do I need to serve the text, but the text - when I'm doing it right - acts as the perfect 'blueprint', and all the architecture is there. The poet has done the heavy lifting, so my job is to find the soul of the poem and then somehow translate that into music.

Background scores allow me an absolute flight of the imagination, and I travel in my mind's eye. I do not like the scores to have vocal notes, because they act as a limitation to these flights of fancy.

I learned a lot from working with and watching Knxwledge, seeing how he produces non-stop. He doesn't dwell too long on stuff. He's very simple, using only about two or three elements. I like that in production. Sometimes it doesn't take more than three drums, a melody, the vocal, looping a sample or whatever, just as minimal as possible.

It's always a pleasure when you can compose guitar parts from a strong vocal and not just put the melody on top of guitar riffs.

I've read and heard that some of the most inspiring vocal interpreters adhere habitually to one rule: Always think the lyrics as you're singing them, so that the sentiment is always appropriate and heartfelt.

I was in art school, and we had all these random classes. We'd listen to a lot of Bollywood. I'd listen to Spanish music - and I don't even speak Spanish, but Hector Lavoe is amazing - we listened to French music like Edith Piaf. She's tight. I like cool vocal inflections; I like cool sounds. I pretty much listen to anything I think is good.

I would have to say Sam Cooke is the one I admired most. His artistry and vocal, just the way he did it.

I would start seeing, in just the sense I was saying now, the kind of record it was going to be and what the arrangement demands, and what my vocal part should be in the record. This was all emerging as the song was emerging.

I wouldn't say I worked with these people because I was looking for a particular vocal sound. I worked with them because I loved what they had done before-and because they really wanted to work with me.

There were a whole lot, I bought every blues record I could find, it wasn't just one or two people. My vocal influences were Ray Charles and Bobby Blue Bland.

A female vocal can lift a song.

A lot of my male vocal influences are British - people like David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and Robert Plant.

I keep these songs in my head until I get behind the microphone. I never spend more than 30 or 40 minutes singing the vocal or it will sound mechanical. There are always mistakes, but it's about feeling more than being perfect.

But my role is to just apply the skills I've learned over the years: you listen to the guitar, you listen to the vocal melodies, you listen to the rhythm, and you come up with something that helps you take the song somewhere.

My vocal ability is very limited, but I'm fortunate in that I can write the songs around my vocal limitations.

I like writing on piano and a computer, and a lot of 'Plans' came out of samples and vocal lines.

I've always looked up to Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey for their outstanding vocal performances. I've always been inspired by them.

When you are in the studio, you don't have anybody to feed off of; meanwhile, when you are playing live, you interact with people and you feel the energy in the room. When the crowd is going crazy, that definitely impacts your vocal performance. I prefer to sing live.