Quotes About Craftsmanship

I'm a very slow songwriter; it takes me sometimes years to write one song, if I ever finish.

It was kind of like songwriter's boot camp. You had to produce. You had to produce fast. You had to learn.

It's cool that our stuff is received as it is, and our stuff is fairly long. But from a songwriter's purview as well as an exercise, I'm trying to write shorter material and find ways to condense ideas.

I'm a professional songwriter - personal attitudes have nothing to do with writing a song.

I wanted to become a better songwriter, so it seemed like a no-brainer to move to Nashville, where some of the best writers in the world live.

I'm more of a songwriter. I love writing songs. I love writing my songs. It's always been writing for me, and it makes it different when you're writing for yourself.

The way I look at it, I'm a songwriter that just happens to play guitar.

I think what makes me great as a songwriter is there's still an artist behind it.

I think there are some songwriters who are just brilliant who can write and then I think there are some songwriters who can like me I have a problem writing chorus lyrics but I can write a song in a story like that.

We pride ourselves on being great songwriters.

We felt like, first and foremost, we were songwriters.

I've often said to young songwriters when they want to write with me, 'Let's take a stab at ten songs, and we might get one really good one.'

I'm basically a songwriter, man. Songwriters are down in the fine print, you know? And I really enjoy that.

The best songwriting comes from being as creative as you can and editing it down to the good bits, essentially.

I always saw songwriting as the top of the heap. No matter what else you were going to do creatively - and there were a lot of choices - writing songs was king.

Performing is the easiest part of what I do, and songwriting is the hardest.

The songwriting of Hall & Oates is deceptively complex. There are a number of key changes that pass you by as you're listening to the song because they're so seamless and clever.

When I make albums, I do a lot of songwriting but not necessarily a whole album.

I think I'm better at songwriting now, and it does come easier. I have faith in my initial instincts.

At the end of the day I'm not just sending beats in. I'm mixing the song. I'm recording the song. I'm engineering the song. I'm in the studio helping with the songwriting. I'm doing the whole beat - every single piece of it is me.

I sit down and I write and I make sure that it follows the code of Songwriting Craft 101.

I'm glad that people realize that I am a songwriter. I just want them to take away the fact that I'm honest, and that I'm putting in work on the sonic side.

Choosing the right mask helps you... We went through many masks. It was very particular leather that as soon as you smudged it, you had to get a new one. We went through about 55 masks.

Accepting that part of the process of writing is deleting a lot of what you write is soothing, at least to me.