Quotes About Composition

I usually write lyrics first, and then when I get home or close to any kind of instrument, I usually make a melody for those lyrics.

As far as the music goes, I like melody.

When I write a song, I get the melody right first, and then hopefully I can back it up with a lyric that has to respect the melody.

My guitar-playing always included bass lines, melody lines, and rhythm-guitar grooves.

I always liked melody.

I always find that, when it comes to writing songs, if the melody and the chords are working, we're 90 per cent there.

I find it really easy to write on the bass, because you kind of get straight to the point: you do lyrics and melody without thinking about decorating the song until after you've finished it.

With Audioslave, it's all about melody and chord progressions.

Composing a melody or a western song is easier than composing a commercial number.

I think you can do a lot with lyrics and melody.

What it boils down to is that we look for a melody and we look for a lyric, and we look for an atmosphere and an emotion, and we try to concoct a song out of all of those ingredients.

The thing with Joy Division's music is that each member was playing like a separate line. We hardly ever played together; we all played separately. But when you put it together, it was like the ingredients in a cake.

Writing for TV or films isn't great art. You have to have a common denominator. It's up to the composer to make that common denominator memorable.

The first 'Charlemagne' album is metal, of course, but what I sang was more symphonic.

Improvisation is a compositional method.

I have a method of working on music: I'll get up in the morning and throw down some drums on my drum machine, and then I'll come back later and try to pop off rhythms to it.

When I was in high school, I became interested in cytochemistry: chemical analysis under the microscope, and trying to understand the composition of cells.

Composing means you have a beginning, middle and end and a fluidity to what you're doing.

My composition often goes toward the black middle class or the black super-wealthy or strong historical black figures.

All these directors who do different locations forget that one room can be shot from a million different angles and a million different ways. When I direct a movie, I'm going to use that.

I guess I like minor chords better than major ones, in general.

I've been living with the minor second all my life and I finally found a way to handle it.

I don't like using fourths and fifths. Instead, I'll come up with a harmony line made up of major and minor thirds above the melody, then I'll drop it down an octave so that the melody is on top and the harmony line is major and minor sixths below it.

There is no evidence when we look to the past for any precedent for the rate of change in atmospheric composition that we're causing, and the rates of change in climate that we can expect, as we continue to burn fossil fuels and elevate these greenhouse gas concentrations.