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I tried to stick with what I knew best, which is writing rock n' roll songs and melodies. I am as passionate as I was when I was 20.
Sep 10, 2025
The words the happy say Are paltry melody But those the silent feel Are beautiful-.
Not everybody has to sing the melody.
When the uniqueness of a place sings to us like a melody, then we will know, at last, what it means to be home
Good melody is never out of fashion
I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming from inside. There's no tricks. It's honesty with big melodies.
I had a melody and a rhythm and chords, but nothing to talk about. I remember reading about how the decline of the steel industry had been affecting the Lehigh Valley, and I decided that's what I was going to write the song about.
I think my melodies are superior to my lyrics.
There is a great temptation with songs, melodies and lyrics to overcomplicate them but in fact, you find that the most enduring melodies are often the simplest.
Rachael Sage is a marvelous young artist- and I am a fan!! 'Haunted by You' has a beauty that shines through her lyrics and melodies-- poignant, tender and tough. These are stories from the heart that will lift you up and carry you to places you had never dreamed.
It's hard - some people get inspired by a feeling, but I'm mostly inspired by melodies.
Home should be an oratorio of the memory, singing to all our after life melodies and harmonies of old-remembered joy.
I'm not a haiku artist, but I wanted to use the phrase 5, 7, 5 in the melody that flows over time. So the string melody, the first one is five notes, the next one is seven, and then the third one is five.
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.
So that's the challenge for me and that has always been the challenge - finding that melody, that riff, that thing that just lights me up and makes me feel like it's Christmas.
Everybody needs inspiration Everbody needs a song. A beautiful melody, When the night's so long. Cause there is no guarantee, That this life is easy.
Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.
The genius of a folk melody or story is not the feeling that it's original but quite the opposite - the feeling that it has existed all along.
I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom or the words that might inspire hope and courage in the face of fear. My weapons are peaceful, for it is only by peace that peace can be attained. The song of freedom must prevail.
There is no formula to it because writing every song, for me, is a little journey. The first note has to lift you and make you go, 'What's this?' You play C, but why is it that one day it leads to G and it didn't yesterday? I don't know. It's everything. It's the walk you take in the morning, it's the night before, the meeting with people, landscapes, the chats, all of that evolves in some way into melody, but I'm not sure how it's going to happen. I'm dealing with the unknown all the time and that is exciting.
The writing of a melody is an emotional moment; success doesn't make it easy.
I'm a very melody-driven writer and I have a rule that I don't write anything down because if I can't remember the melody than it wasn't worth remembering. So it's my way to test myself in the studio. When I was a kid I could sing pretty well so melody always made a lot of sense to me.
Traveling to Europe and traveling in the U.S.A. was a much different experience. 'On the Road' exemplified everything glamorous that was happening on this side of the planet. The book puts off some kind of sweet melody - part hope for the world, part nostalgic.
Music critics think of lyrics first and don't consider melody but so many songs are lyrically depressing but musically great, and that's why they become classics.
I want to throw my voice more, I want to manipulate melody more... I want to be less deliberate and mechanical... I want less melody.
I write all my own songs and they are just simple melodies with a lot of lyrics. They usually have to do with current events and what is going on in the news. You can call them topical songs, songs about the news, and then developing into more philosophical songs later.
I see a correlation between short stories and songs, because of their length and for what they're meant to evoke. Combine certain words with melodies and it all becomes very moving.
Essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything just repeated patterns, musical patterns.
Reggae, oh man. It's the ultimate music. The positivity. The musicality. The whole cultural expressionism of it. The danceability. Just the cool factor. The melody factor. Some of it comes from a religious place. If there were a competition of who makes the best religious music, it would definitely be the Rastafarian reggae.
There was our father, the heart we knew held all of us. Held us heavily and desperately, the doors of his heart opening and closing with the rapidity of stops on an instrument, the quiet felt closures, the ghostly fingering, practice and practice and then, incredibly, sound and melody and warmth.
Todd and Tim [Tobias] write the music, and I come up with the melodies and lyrics. I call it the Ohio Rock Factory. Tim and Todd run the northern plant in Cleveland, and I've got the southern plant down here in Dayton. No tours permitted.
After playing now for 60 years, it's still very challenging for me to play a simple melody and have it clean and touch the reed at the proper time in the proper way.
Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me.
They all have tired mouths and bright seamless souls. And a longing (as for sin) sometimes haunts their dreams. They are almost all alike; in God's gardens they keep still, like many, many intervals in his might and melody. Only when they spread their wings are they wakers of a wind: as if God with his broad sculptor- hands leafed through the pages in the dark book of the beginning.
When I pick up the guitar, it's a melody, and that's what drives the lyrics. It's bits and pieces of truth, but it is storytelling.
By giving the public a rich and full melody, distinctly arranged and well played, all the time creating new tone colors and patterns, I feel we have a better chance of being successful. I want a kick to my band, but I don't want the rhythm to hog the spotlight.
We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war.
When we listen to improvisational jazz, or solo classical violinists, the way they phrase and inflect melodies feels vocal, like they’re talking to us. When I was figuring out how to perform solo, I wanted to move back and forth between bass riffs, melody, and harmony, so I often used sounds instead of — or alongside — the words of a song. I found that if I sang a line using the consonants, vowels, shadings, and inflection we recognize as human language sounds, people responded as if I were talking to them.
Love is the only bow on Life's dark cloud. It is the Morning and the Evening Star. It shines upon the cradle of the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of Art—inspirer of poet, patriot, and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart— builder of every home—kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody, for Music is the voice of Love.
Make your melodies simple enough so that the average person can hum them.
Country music to me is heartfelt music that speaks to the common man. It is about real life stories with rather simple melodies that the average person can follow. Country music should speak directly and simply about the highs and lows of life. Something that anyone can relate to.
Sometimes, the best songs are the ones you write without any pen and paper or audio recording device or guitar in your hands. Because there's nothing between you and the melody; it's just a great lyric.
I feel that as a writer and as a performer too. I never really thought about backstory for characters. It was much more of a musical approach: You learn a melody, and then you sing it, I suppose, or you find a rhythm or a cadence that works for the material. And then it's sort of about hitting that note correctly and finding those beats.
I've never heard of any one single artist being the subject in an ongoing series of radio programs for decades. Bearing this in mind, that's the kind of thing Frank Sinatra brings out in his audience, his followers. It's personally satisfying to me because his music by and large was the greatest quality of lyrics, melody, orchestration and, of course, his magnificent approach to telling a story.
I love the melody of an unknown language, the strange food, all the surprises of a strange town, and my own impatience and curiosity ... I love traveling as others love the gaming table; I anticipate a new place as others anticipate the next number to come up.
I approach song writing three different ways. One way is where I write the initial melody and lyrics first and then take it in to the producer to collaborate. Another way is where the producer sends me his initial musical track ideas and then I write the lyrics and melody over his track. The third way is where we just jam out in the studio and see what we come up with.
Seek to make life henceforth a consecrated thing; that so, when the sunset is nearing, with its murky vapors and lowering skies, the very clouds of sorrow may be fringed with golden light. Thus will the song in the house of your pilgrimage be always the truest harmony. It will be composed of no jarring, discordant notes; but with all its varied tones will form one sustained, life-long melody; dropped for a moment in death, only to be resumed with the angels, and blended with the everlasting cadences of your Father's house.
I remember my father playing me Same Situation when I was a nipper, and saying how nobody since has done melodies as well as Joni Mitchell. I concur. The thing that most affected me was just her resonance, and that is something she must have been born with.
Enya never writes a bad melody. That's first and foremost her secret. As she goes along, she'll start changing the dynamics, pushing here and there so that not everything is perfectly in unison. It adds a texture you can acquire only from having different voices. The variations lead to interesting quirks. It's an integral part of the Enya sound.
The most difficult thing in music is still to write a melody of several bars which can be self-sufficient. That is the secret of music. While the technique should be as perfected as possible, that is a lesser essential Anybody can acquire a brilliant technique Melody alone permits a work to survive.