It's easy to get people to sing along to cover songs, but when it's your song, it's the coolest.
My place in London is very small, so a piano would take up a third of the room. I leave home in the morning when I'm there and go to my studio. I close the door, and it's soundproof. There's no phone or TV or computer, and I can work uninterruptedly. That has been a huge advantage over the years.
All my writing takes place during the recording of the master tapes. I never do have songs when I start up an album. I actually write them while I record.
I was in a choir as a kid. It was from those early days that my outlook on harmonies and arrangements were nurtured. I always took that with me, even on the earliest Bad Religion record, which strangely was only about six years after that.
If you're writing a screenplay for a feature, you don't have any involvement with the casting process, the editing process, the set design, the costume design, or any of that stuff.
Since his childhood, Bappa has observed me singing and practicing and is well aware of all sorts of recording and singing arrangements. I have a studio at my home, so whenever he needs my help I make sure I stand by him. I often sing for the tunes that he composes.
I think the Beatles is one band that, if I'm working on a song arrangement or if I have some idea for a song, and there's a little bit of a Beatles quality to it, I never avoid that. I always will steer into it.
I'm so jealous of my friends who came from these super musical households where they were learning piano at three years old. My parents didn't really play loads of music around the house. We had the radio, but they weren't teaching me about music.
I think an album is all about the songs you've worked on and the journey it's taken to get there.
I have no such ambition of becoming an actor. I want to grow as a musician, singer and songwriter.
The creative process for a musician is very different than for a filmmaker. I have an idea, and I can pretty much execute it.
When I began, the guitar was en-closed in a vicious circle. There were no composers writing for the guitar, be-cause there were no virtuoso guitarists.
I would say that I'm more moved by melody, even though I love to rap.
Lyrics over some nice beats - that's what the people want from us.
I started out with V Shantaram. But my favourite director has been Gulzar, with whom I did intelligent cinema in movies like 'Khushboo,' 'Kinara' and 'Parichay.'
I know as far as I'm concerned, I'm getting really excited about writing, and I'm taking guitar and vocal lessons.
Being in the studio is okay but sitting in a room by yourself composing is a discipline that takes a certain type of mind set and Tommy has a great gift for that as did the previous guy.
My brother is an excellent songwriter, and I play guitar and drums.
I pull a lot of the stuff that I play off the rhythm tracks - and Keith Richards has been one of the main contributors to my inspirational playing.
I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home.
I'm a struggling guitar player.
I can imagine myself as an old man writing music for choir or orchestra. I don't know that I'll be touring six months out of the year in a rock band when I'm 60.
A lot of people in Nashville think that the best song is the catchiest or the one that sells the most copies. They're editing songs in a way that make them seem more consumable, I guess. I'm trying to edit them in a way that makes them more honest.
So I'll set a cycle in motion and pop it into record and I'll lay down a drum pattern, a bass line, a keyboard and guitar part, and once the groove is going I launch into the song and sing my song over the top.
Breaking Benjamin, talk about songwriting, I mean, some of the greatest songwriters of the modern era. And, obviously, it's a little heavier.
