When you use a sample in a big way, when you loop something in the way I did with ‘Runaround Sue,’ it’s like you have your chords and your melody and the quality of the song right there before you add your own production. It’s like the song is already made, in a sense.
Like a Star’ has a very simple melody, and when you play it, it’s only about three notes for ages, and it’s quite boring. But when you hear the chords, the chords are sort of different than the melody, and it’s pulling it around and making it mean something else.
I started playing when I was about 13, mainly because Dad had guitars lying around the house. My dad taught me my first three chords, and I taught myself from there.
We are the kind of people who obsess over one word… but we have only one shot to get it right in concert. It was hard the first time I practiced with them. I was so nervous that my vocal chords were paralyzed for about a half-hour.
I can plunk out enough chords to write a song, but I’m completely afraid to play guitar in front of other people. It’s a fear of failure, I guess.
Branding is not merely about differentiating products; it is about striking emotional chords with consumers. It is about cultivating identity, attachment, and trust to inspire customer loyalty. Chinese brands score low on attributes such as ‘sophisticated,’ ‘desirable,’ ‘innovative,’ ‘friendly,’ and ‘trustworthy.’
Except for a few guitar chords, everything I’ve learned in my life that is of any value I’ve learned from women.
My guitar only has five strings ’cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there.
Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.
I’m usually just writing lyrics alone in my room, but I’m happy to be producing and writing chords anywhere.
If you don’t make those vocal chords work, they’ll go dormant on you.
I would type in things like, ‘How to play beginner songs on guitar,’ and one of the first I learnt was ‘Hey, Soul Sister’ by Train. I taught myself these chords I didn’t know the name of and slowly started to get the hang. I was obsessed with it.
I don’t know about five guys against the world. It’s more like five guys against these three chords, and we’re gonna wrestle ’em down no matter what it takes.
I learned some chords and I started watching anybody I could, once I really got into it.
I’ve had problems with my throat over the years, playing with loud bands for years, and I’ve had bruised vocal chords and nodules.
That’s the whole point is just to bring people together in a really positive way and laugh together and cry together and just be connected through a simple thing of a few chords.
I write most of my songs to beats. I play around on guitar, but not enough to where I can compose my own stuff or play solos. I can accompany myself ’cause most songs are, like, four chords.
I learned to play by ear before I learned music theory. For me, that makes sense. After all, children learn to speak before they read and write. The more you understand of music – how harmony and time signatures work, and what chords and inversions are – the more you’ll enjoy it.
I played with so many musicians and some of the musicians would have something I want. I steal a lot of them, and I mash it up, I mash it up into my chords.
A friend of mine, that I had known for some time, came up one day with an old guitar. I don’t know where he got it, I don’t know how long he’d had it, but he knew about two chords on it. He proceeded to teach them to me, and then we proceeded to go crazy over music.
I know a few chords on the guitar, but I wouldn’t be able do a show or even be part of a jam session with one.
Country music is three chords and the truth.
Where prominent writers are expected to have a socially, politically responsible voice, musicians sometimes find meaning only in the voice which produces melodies with vocal chords.
My favorite way to get into the songwriting process is to get into the studio, and then usually, they play a loop of four chords, or something, or guitar, and then I just start singing.
It was very challenging, trying to add an orchestra on top of these traditional African rhythms, because as soon as you add any kind of melody or chords over it, it stops feeling African.
I would get my laugh insured! Because my laugh is very important: it’s a million dollar laugh, so if my vocal chords make my laugh any different, then I’m going to have to get insured.
I tried several times to get the song right. The tune and the chords that I started with, there really wasn’t anywhere else it could go. I stopped fighting it and let it take me away.
I’ve been playing swing chords for a long time.
I’ve had cysts on my vocal chords.
My father played one of the first electric guitars in England. He built his own in 1940, because you couldn’t buy them in those days. He used three telephone pickups under the strings, which gave chronic distortion on chords but was quite good on single notes.
I don’t play any instruments. I don’t produce. I don’t know which keys or chords I am using, so, in essence, I need the band and the production team – otherwise, I am just some guy with a hat and a song.
I’m no good with chords. I’m horrible with chords.
Motherhood is at its best when the tender chords of sympathy have been touched.
I knew if I wanted to improvise over chord changes, I’d have to figure out all the scales that went with all those chords.
I was driving home and thinking about what rock and roll should be about. ‘Adventure and Trouble!’ I thought. I sang the song first and then added the chords later.
Even though country is a large percentage of what I do. I don’t want to get locked into just one area because I write a lot of different kinds of music and I like doing three-part harmony, minor chords and pop music.
When you sample something, you’re using the crutch of borrowing chords and melodies from a song that’s already great, that’s already stood the test of time, that’s already special. When you’re trying to do it all from scratch, you’re writing something brand new that has to stand on its own.
You treat the air as a canvas and the paint is the chords that come through your fingers, out of the keyboard.
A friend of mine, that I had known for some time, came up one day with an old guitar. I don’t know where he got it, I don’t know how long he’d had it, but he knew about two chords on it. He proceeded to teach them to me, and then we proceeded to go crazy over music.
When I was first learning songs, I’d have a favorite song, and I’d take the chords and twist them around. I’d learn the chords and then play them backward. That was my first experimenting with writing a song.
I used to feel that musical knowledge and emotional truth-telling were antagonistic. But I was too curious about chords and instruments and recording to stay locked in that mentality.
I listen to Prince on my iPad. And I use a Chords & Scales app to warm up before performing.
With a track like ‘White Christmas,’ everybody has done that song in every format you can imagine, so I just looked at the chords at that particular song and what chords would make it work. That’s kind of quite a sad song, and I had this idea of someone singing it in the subway, someone who is homeless, old and sad.
There’s only seven chords, so you got to use the same ones over and over. It’s all in what you do with them.
When I listen to songs, to this day, I listen to the chords and the groove and the melody.
I always say that to compose is to think. Playing is good, it’s useful, but it’s how your intellect puts the ideas together that will bring hands to write or to play. So, it’s really a combination of many things; hearing sounds, hearing layers of counterpoints, of chords.
It took me a month to get out of the mindset of O.J. But even now, still, I think it might have done something to my vocal chords. I went to see the doctor, and he was like, ‘I don’t see anything. You’re fine.’ But mentally, I might have broke a little bit.
Pete Townshend used to crash chords and let the guitar feed back. He’s overrated.
One has to sing from the heart to let it touch the right chords. Unless you enjoy the song, your listener will not either.
All you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label.
I love listening to Radio Head’s ‘Everything in its Right Place’ because it’s all major chords, it makes you feel really good. It’s soothing, it’s got a beautiful voice, crazy textures. When I’m down I listen to that song and it really makes me feel good.
I think that I make chords when I paint, so I think you would be listening to the cello. It’s deep, and it’s resonant. A lot of people have compared me to Brahms – that slightly melancholic sensuality that’s highly structured. Well, that describes my work right there.
I just like simplicity. I like simple songs, I like simple chords, simple vocals, simple lead guitar. I just like simplicity. That’s just the way I like it.
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