Quotes About Music

It is kind of easy for me to speak out. Just because I am very vocal in my music about a lot of different emotions, like anger, and normally stuff that people would hide, I'm okay with as a woman.

I started taking vocal lessons, I always loved the challenge of playing my instrument and trying to sing.

I've always been a natural singer on stage and in the studio - never had a vocal lesson in my life.

I can do the vocal acrobatics but I really try not to. I've always been drawn to singers who sing it like it is, pure, straight down the line: Ella Fitzgerald, Patti Smith, Carole King. Simplicity is really important to me.

I discovered later in life that there's not that many men with a counter-tenor vocal ability.

Usually what I do is I write my vocal melody over guitar parts and then I come up with lyrics.

I never start a song at the beginning; I always start in the middle, working with the original concept. That might be a loop or a vocal hook. A weird noise or a string sample. Once that's at the heart of the song, I work concertina-fashion, expanding the song forwards to the end and backwards to the beginning.

Ultimately, I'd say a lot of my vocal influences are jazz-based, people like Ella Fitzgerald, or Fred Astaire.

Almost every time, if the vocal is really good, the band is almost always good too.

I've had cysts on my vocal chords.

A lot of people with a range of styles and vocal tones make all kinds of music for all sorts of audiences. I'll be forever grateful for that.

And singing is a physical thing - your vocal cords are these muscles.

The music I want to hear in my head sounds somewhere between Jimi Hendrix and Massive Attack. It's not really like my dad, but there will always be similarities because we have the same vocal cords, and I learnt the guitar the way he taught me.

If you listen to 'Paris,' when I'm up on the bridge part, it literally sounds like my vocal cords are being ripped apart.

Michael Jackson carried urban America and eventually American society on his vocal cords for a good 25 to 30 years before even hip-hop became the vox populi of America, and then as an adult he shattered racial barriers.

I felt a little uncomfortable because, when I went in to the military, I was the main male vocalist they had and when I came out they had like two or three vocalists. Otis came in when I was in the military, too.

I try to find a vocalist that I don't have to make better. I try to find a vocalist that can make me better, and in turn, I can make them better so that we are, as a team, making ourselves better. I like the vocalist to challenge me. I love to challenge a vocalist.

I progressed through so many different styles of music through my teen years, both as a player and a vocalist, particularly the jazz and pop of the early 20th Century.

In college, I was able to be the vocalist for the jazz band at Arkansas State.

We used to have a main female vocalist. But she had a baby. Now we do the singing ourselves.

Van Morrison is probably, at this point in time, my biggest influence as a vocalist. When we were making our last album I had a vinyl copy of 'Veedon Fleece' in the vocal booth in front of me, in the dorky sense. I think there were candles around, which is really tacky, but hey, I needed to channel Van the Man!

One of my biggest musical influences is definitely Ella Fitzgerald as a vocalist.

As a songwriter and as a vocalist, Adele is amazing. You have that. But then there's something about her that's just very honest. I feel like so many people across the board can relate to her and who she is. She's just so appealing and very real.

In any event, I'm proud to wear the badge of jazz vocalist if that's what people want to call me; but at the same time, there are many other things I like to do.