In Latin America, people want you to write beautiful melodies and words. But there are also songs that do well because they show the reality of life.
I enjoy singing soulful melodies because they add that extra zing to your performance.
There’s the drums, the music, the melodies, the lyrics, the production, the artwork: there are so many elements to making an album, and the drumming is just a very small fraction of what I focus on.
I write lyrics. putting words and melodies to my songs. That’s a real challenge, I take it on vigorously.
When it comes to melodies, production, and sound in pop music, people try to be formulaic and solely concerned with what’s resonant in a way that is so cheap and ugly. It actually just devolves culture, ultimately.
Poems, unlike songs, are written to be read and, thus, come equipped with their own rhythms and melodies; they’re self-contained entities, the whole shebang.
I never really had any trouble selling my music to country audiences. They appreciate honest lyrics and straightforward melodies, and that’s what I do.
I guess everywhere I go, I get inspired by those places, and then I have a bunch of Voicenotes on my phone. Everywhere I go, I think of these random melodies. It’s crazy because everywhere you go, the melodies are totally different.
When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‘Off to the Races’ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.
I personally like melodies. And Mani Sharma garu is the Melody Brahma.
I want people to hear my lyrics and my melodies and say, ‘That dude’s in pain.’
It’s really hard for me to sing and play bass. Unless you’re singing something that’s kind of in rhythm with the bass, the melodies, it’s just difficult.
Many times, the way I write my themes or melodies is that I hear it, and then I sing into my phone or something, or I’ll scribble down on a piece of paper.
I get to play around with different ideas and beautiful melodies. I don’t have to yell in a rock voice. I think you can get an emotional depth in the types of rooms we’re playing that you can’t find in larger rooms.
In their plush melodies and plummy platitudes, many Rodgers-and-Hammerstein songs were secular hymns, which so insinuated themselves into the ear of the Eisenhower-era listener that they became the liturgical music for the American mid-century.
I don’t meditate in any formal way, but I often lie in bed or find myself in nature and enter into that state of quiet where I get images, feelings, or melodies.
Trust me, the only real way to understand ‘Chic’ is in highfalutin terms. Our chord progressions were based on European modal melodies. I made those early ‘Chic’ records to impress my jazz friends.
Often, when I work with a vocalist, I like to focus on the melodies first.
The sound of tap is not ‘clickety clickety tap tap,’ this monotone thing. The sound of tap has depth. We want you to hear the different highs and lows, the bass, the trebles and the melodies, if you can.
I like the sounds of EDM; the guys create new sounds, beautiful sounds. The melodies, it’s a little less. I like the kind of melodies I did with Donna Summer, or ‘Flashdance,’ where you have a verse, a chorus – a song setup.
Lyrics are important, but it’s hard, because English isn’t my first language – although it feels like it is these days! I grew up with amazing melodies, so getting that right on a song has always been the key thing for me, but there’s no reason why a great melody doesn’t deserve great lyrics.
People forget how outcast ‘They Might Be Giants’ can be. They have a reputation for writing really deft, funny, clever melodies, and they also make a lot of music for kids, which is terrific, but when you see them in concert, they can rock the house.
I listen to what people say in the songs, not just the melodies. With rappers you gotta listen to what they say.
At times I have a beat first and then I write. Sometimes I have a melody in my head and I pick up the guitar to develop the song. Other times I just write without any melodies, and I end up using those lyrics when I think I have the appropriate instrumental that would bring out and depict the emotions of what I have written.
Along with its enchanting and exquisite melodies, West Side Story has attitude and a tremendous amount of frenetic energy. It’s emotional, theatrical and technical. It’s everything.
I found when I started getting serious about writing music, that my writing was country songs. It was basically country subject matter, country melodies and simple chord changes.
Listening to all these different musical genres from all over the world and listening to my father’s record collection, the Irish folk influences from home. Of course they’re all in there somewhere hiding within the lyrics and melodies. But rap music was the biggest influence on my way of writing and my performing.
I hear these melodies. I hear horn lines and string lines. That’s what’s fun about recording with an orchestra.
When you are accompanying someone, you are listening to them the way you listen to a Bach Chorale, where four parts are going on at the same time, all of which are gorgeous melodies, all being played simultaneously.
I like inventive melodies and chord changes, a little bit of creativity.
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.
Whether it’s my words, my melodies, or the production, I wanted it all to bring something out of whoever was listening.
First of all, The Go-Go’s have always had pop melodies, OK? And the punk aspect was just at the root of it.
There was a lack of inspiration in London. There were a lot of dregs of the Libertines’ movement, and we didn’t want to do that. We wanted big melodies and hooks, organic melodies that could fall apart at any moment.
But my role is to just apply the skills I’ve learned over the years: you listen to the guitar, you listen to the vocal melodies, you listen to the rhythm, and you come up with something that helps you take the song somewhere.
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.
I grew up watching Gregory Hines banging out rhythms like drum beats, and Jimmy Slyde dancing these melodies, you know, bop-bah-be-do-bap, not just tap-tap-tap. Everyone else was dancing in monotone, but I could hear the hoofers in stereo, and they influenced me to have this musical approach towards tap.
Something we’re really known for is our signature harmonies, our great melodies – stuff that just makes you feel something and moves you.
Every new experience will trigger melodies in my head.
Usually, I’ll just be walking from my house to somewhere else, and melodies and words will start coming up, and I’ll have to run home to write it all down.
You put my voice on R&B melodies, on top of a real country band, and the sky’s the limit.
The only criticism heard with any frequency of Elton John’s first American album, ‘Elton John,’ was that the production was too grandiose. The melodies were superb, and lyrics frequently very good, and the performances flawless.
I first write melodies that will make people shiver, and then, I add the lyrics.
My hope is that witnessing the beautiful harmony created by merging different musical melodies will help people realize the beauty in our own differences.
Though music transcends language, culture and time, and though notes are the same, Indian music is unique because it is evolved, sophisticated and melodies are defined.
I’m not just making rhymes and making melodies. I’m expressing my true life force, energy.
I write songs with melodies, which have sold for decades.
Chemistry is the melodies you can play on vibrating strings.
When I come up with a melody in my head, it could be anywhere: in the shower, on the plane, in bed – often when I’m on the go. I’ll record it on my phone with my own voice, humming. When I get to the studio, I check which melodies work.
For many artists and critics, beauty is a discredited idea. It denotes the saccharine sylvan scenes and cheesy melodies that appealed to Granny.
The Beatles were a huge influence on me to write really good melodies.
It’s like a painter with various layers of paint. I start with a drum loop and add keyboards, and then melodies start to take shape. The vocals happen later. I’ve never really done therapy before, but it’s a form of therapy. Everything else falls away.
Ever since I was a child I’ve always been very attracted to melodies. Whether I hear Jeff Beck, a choir, an ocean or the wind, there’s always a melody in there.
To me, dance music is a lot of space – to listen to other things than melodies. I think club music and dance music really require a different way of listening.
Avicii’s melodies were so simple and cool, and they were actually similar to the melodies I played on piano. I thought if I could teach myself how to produce and get those melodies out of my head and into the computer, maybe I could make some cool music, too.
Often, with our music, there’s quite a lot going on, so people hear melodies that sound up and catchy, and production, and maybe don’t really listen to what the songs are about, so it’s nice to sing a song like ‘The Currents’ and really mean it.
