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I'm taking drama classes, they say I'm a natural actress. I think it's just because I talk a lot. I'm also learning how to play guitar and piano. Piano is really hard though. My dad is teaching me and I just get so confused because the chords are so different, but by learning I hope to be able to be a songwriter as well.
Sep 10, 2025
I just started off on my own by learning the regular chords then the barre chords. Then I'd lean the notes that would go with them.
It's like I'll sit down and put my hands on the piano or the guitar, and then I'll hear a sound or I'll feel a chord that will resonate and then I'll get something happening in my voice. My voice is like a car that I get into and drive but I don't know where I'm going. And I record everything. And often, I sort of get into a state, a creative state that is, where I'm just feeling around melodically, and playing things off the top of my head. Then I go back and listen to it and for the first time, hear what I just did. It's like Elvis has left the building while the thing is happening.
The strangest part of Indian music is its lack of chords: There's no such thing as major or minor, and it's unusual to hear more than two different pitches at the same time.
The marvels of God are not brought forth from one's self. Rather, it is more like a chord, a sound that is played. The tone does not come out of the chord itself, but rather, through the touch of the musician. I am, of course, the lyre and harp of God's kindness.
If I'm looking really intense, it's not because I'm trying to be mystical. It's because I'm thinking '[Dagnabit], that was supposed to be a 7th chord'.
Writing is a perpetual choice between a thousand expressions, none of which satisfies me, none of which, above all, satisfies me without the others. Yet I ought to know that only music permits a succession of chords.
Once I got the open tunings for some reason, I began to get the harmonic sophistication that I heard that my musical fountain inside was excited by. Once I got some interesting chords to play with, my writing began to come.
As a melody instrument player, it's all about getting from one note to the next, and those intervals and how you navigate your way through these vertical structures of chords. You realize that everything's moving forward and it's all linear.
In those days, I didn't know how guys like Clapton and Beck were getting that searing blues lead sound, so I developed my style to be rhythmic and chord-based, with simple lead lines that you could almost hum.
Rock music is quite big in India - but it mostly just replaces all the intricacies of Indian rhythms and Indian melody with lumpen rock drumming and power chords.
As soon as you impose Western chords on an Indian scale, something great collapses.
There are no rules or certain methods. I usually start with the guitar or piano and sing melodies over the chords. The lyrics seem to be born out of that, and the fact that it's still a mystery to me is my favorite part.
I know I have patterns and I've always tried hard to avoid them. There are definitely certain things in my music, if I'm looking back, "Well, that was a period where I was experimenting with a certain kind of chord structure or a certain kind of sound." I've tried really hard, but I'd be hard pressed to tell you what that sound, what that tangible sound of "me" is.
I personally kind of yearn to play characters who are complex and who strike a truthful chord in me and who are challenged in some way and, I guess, who kind of move through those challenges.
I practice all the scales. Everyone should know lots of scales. Actually, I feel there are only scales. What is a chord, if not the notes of a scale hooked together?
I began to learn a lot of chords and rhythms. It was a bit boring at the time but came in very handy later on.
I don't want to discredit people's opinions of me, but you talk about the violin or the cello or lead guitar where you have to learn tons of chords, that's much more difficult.
I remember writing a song when I was about 15. This is the one I can remember. I know I'd been writing poetry for a long time, since I was about eight, but I remember my first one that I put to chords. I was really trying to be like the psychedelic era Beatles, I was obsessed. All I could think about was Beatles and Hendrix. So I tried to write a psychedelic song, and it was the worst. I couldn't even... If I read it now - I still have the book somewhere - it makes me cringe out loud. It was just about psychedelic stuff.
I really got into psych because everything has a really good groove to it and it's nicely spaced out, but ultimately they are just cool pop songs with a little something else that makes them special and unique. They are interesting and have another dimension to them besides a three chord change.
I get inspiration, a lot of times, from very commonplace things that just strike a chord and develop themselves in the subconscious.
The melodies are always the most important part to me. I am pulled more to the groove than the chord progression. After you find the groove, you find the most simple chord progressions and then sit inside that groove.
I didn't go to guitar school and I don't know how to play chords, but I can do it in my own way and I think sometimes that will piss off some guitar players who sit around playing their stuff all day long and then there are people who like that.
Not only do you need great lyrics, a great message, a great story, great vocals, great chords... you also need great instrumentation, great editing, great sonics, great mixing, and great mastering. It all comes together to make something truly great, and I think each element combines together to create a powerful impact on the consumer.
The soul of our music, The Monkees' music, lies somewhere inbetween the 1 1/2 , the 2 1/2, the 3 3/4 and th giant C-major chord on the piano!
Sometimes, I actually end up doing three or four different versions of one song, and sometimes, those versions can be done very differently. They can be very laid back, downtempo, or sometimes the same song can be quite uptempo. But it is always the same melody and chord progressions.
Learn 2 chords and then get a good lawyer before learning the 3rd.
There seemed to be a sense about Sarah [Harmer] even back then.She was obviously a quick study. I remember going to the Harmer farmhouse and sitting around the pool, and Sarah had a guitar. Maybe I knew four chords, but she already knew five. After doing 600 gigs that week, I would sing with her in a ragged voice, and she had the voice of a bird.
When I'm playing music I'm usually not thinking of surfing, just because I'm usually thinking about the chords and the lyrics, and sometimes that messes me up 'cause you'll start thinking, "Wait, how am I doing this?" But when I'm surfing, I'm usually thinking about music - whether it's an idea for a new song, or just singing a song in my head.
At a certain point, I should start to pay attention and make sure I'm not damaging my vocal chords, because I enjoy using them a lot.
I've been used for writing rhythm guitar chords for a long time because it's so easy to play and chords just sound good on it.
Rap is the number one most influential thing, it's the only genre that really strikes a chord. When you sing, you feel a certain way and it makes you feel good, but when you rap, it just strikes a chord a whole different way.
I actually prefer it if I don't know what I'm supposed to do. If you've got an equal temperament piano keyboard, then you know what you're going to get if you play certain chords. But I actually like it if you don't know where the notes are, because then you do it intuitively. You're working out a new language, basically. New rules.
Maybe sometimes things come to you that you never, in a thousand years, would have included. But they strike a chord, so grab it. Trust your ability to know what's true to it and what would carry you off into outer space.
I've mainly been sampling jazz because the tone of the chords are expressive in itself, so it's quite nice to write over.
I'll write and make chords with my voice sometimes if I don't have an instrument even though it takes a million times longer.
When I first starting making beats, I didn't know samples were being used in any beats. I had no idea where producers were getting the real string sounds or the voices on their tracks. I knew nothing about loops or sampling off of records. So, by me knowing nothing about this it made me concentrate on my chords on the keyboard.
Every breath drawn by an individual who truly serves God will elicit a responsive chord from the universe around him.
This is no science, this is art, where equations fall away to elements like resolving chords, and where always prevails a symmetry either explicit or multiplex, but always of a crystalline serenity.
It's funny how three or four notes of anger can be struck at once, creating the perfect chord of fury.
No joy for which thy hungering heart has panted, No hope it cherishes through waiting years, But if thou dost deserve it, shall be granted For with each passionate wish the blessing nears. Tune up the fine, strong instrument of thy being To chord with thy dear hope, and do not tire. When both in key and rhythm are agreeing, Lo! thou shalt kiss the lips of thy desire. The thing thou cravest so waits in the distance, Wrapt in the silences, unseen and dumb: Essential to thy soul and thy existence-- Live worthy of it--call, and it shall come.
Let no one pray that they know not sorrow, Let no soul ask to be free from pain, For the gall of to-day is the sweet of to-morrow, And the moment's loss is the lifetime's gain. Through want of a thing does its worth redouble, Through hunger's pangs does the feast content, And only the heart that has harboured trouble Can fully rejoice when joy is sent. Let no one shrink from the bitter tonics Of grief, and yearning, and need, and strife, For the rarest chords in the soul's harmonics Are found in the minor strains of life.
I bad a piano long before I bad a guitar, and the practice I got just playing those three chords in a basic 12-bar blues song was very important.
When I first started, I worked with three chords in every bar, but I found that tied me down - I'm not a chord-change writer, I'm a songwriter.
After a while, another voice said: One, two, three, four- And the universe came into being. It was wrong to call it a big bang. That would just be noise, and all that noise could create is more noise and a cosmos full of random particles. Matter exploded into being, apparently as chaos, but in fact as a chord. The ultimate power chord.
I was 16 when I came to New York. I had graduated to a tenor banjo in the school jazz band, and it was kind of boring - just chords, chords, chords. Then my father took me to a mountain music and dance festival in Asheville, North Carolina, and there I saw relatively uneducated people playing great music by ear.
I guess the approach to song writing for me so far has been to use more chords and less math.
Sin hath broke the world's sweet peace--unstrung Th' harmonious chords to which the angels sung.
Human nature is not amenable to prediction based on the trends or tendencies prevailing at the time. It is amenable to startling creativity of the kind practiced by great artists, directors, writers, musicians, actors, who know how to touch a chord in humans everywhere.
Before I went on stage at Kyle Hutton's Real Life Real Music Festival, I heard one of his songwriting students, Abbey Hirvela, sing; she was in the poet's saddle and riding that horse like she owned it. She was good! I probably ruined her by showing her how to make an E chord without the 3rd though.