Melodic Storytelling Quotes

John Prine in particular... just the chord changes combined with the words. He definitely can make you cry a little bit. Just a little bit.

I tell stories to music and, thank God, in tune.

You don't have to be as good a writer to write a song; it's a very different process to writing straight prose. To learn how to write prose takes a lot of years of practice.

John Ottman's music has emerged...as a brilliant new sound in the spectrum of Motion Pictures.

The Irish aren't great singers, but they have great songs.

You can find me in the melodies, the chord progressions, the song style and structure. The lyrical places you fine me most are in the lyrics that 'show' more than 'tell.' I like to describe what the listener is seeing and let them make up the middle rather than telling them.

Music is very, very important in my movies. In some ways the most important stage, whether it ends up being in the movie or not, is just when I come up with the idea itself before I have actually sat down and started writing. I go into my record room... I have a big vinyl collection and I have a room kind of set up like a used record store and I just dive into my music, whether it be rock music, or lyric music, or my soundtrack collection. What I'm looking for is the spirit of the movie, the beat that the movie will play with.

The blessing of being able to write music and let music speak for itself is you let the melodies and let the lyrics and the groove talk to people instead of me talking to people.

I have the instincts of a minstrel rather than those of a scrivener. There you have it. We are not of the same trade at all and so how can your rules fit me?

Every song with lyrics is lyrical.

A story is not only meaning, it's music as well.

Every song I've ever written always starts with the words because I want the music to be the musical extension of the feelings of the words, and not the words being the emotional extension of the feeling of the music.

The point is to balance on the edge between musicality and content.

If I can sit down at my keyboard and have a melody that says something that I can't with words, that's a really beautiful thing.

I think my music is definitely country but it's got a little bit of that rock flair about it. I always try to find the things that everyday people deal with in their everyday lives and situations in the songs that I sing.

I've always loved songwriting, and I vowed to be a songwriter like Cole Porter when I was only 9 years old.

I always knew Gordon Lightfoot was a really great songwriter, but his stuff even sounds better and better all the time. It's just so really good to me. It's just like that's what should be in a dictionary, you know, next to a really good contempory folk song, is a Gordon Lightfoot song.

I try to look at most of my solos as a musical piece within the song, not, say, showing off.

I am a big fan of music in terms of storytelling device.

Songwriters always reminded me of that kid at school who would go around with his guitar, like, "Yeah, songwritin' man," looking wistful. That wasn't me - those kinds of people put me off.

All through the 'Guttertown' record, there's happy, there's sad, there's strange - and I'm painting that picture.

We've always liked music in movies, you know, just 'cause it helps tell the story. It can be emotional. It can be funny. It can be so many different things. And it just and it gives you variety from and again, there's a certain stylization that happens with music. Animation and music seem to go together well.

I try to tell a story musically in a song.

It's just me and my guitar, and the rhythm's from there, and the poetry of life.

Music begins where words are powerless to express. Music is made for the inexpressible. I want music to seem to rise from the shadows and indeed sometimes to return to them.