Big band music, to me, it really has three key elements. First is the lyrics are really sweet, and they're just really family-friendly. The second thing is the music is jazz music, so the music is complicated enough to hold your attention for 5 or 6 ...
I see friends who are in different genres of music, and they say they're so burnt playing the same stuff every night. That's why you see a country act wanting to go out and play an old classic rock song. But what cracks me up is that they all want to...
We have to make the physical music a little more valuable instead of just having a download link and a bunch of songs you downloaded from some torrent site. People try to make the music value-less, and I don't think we're going to stop that train, bu...
A friend of mine once told me that I can't screw up when I play my own music. I also take voice lessons, play other peoples' songs out of music books, and occasionally figure out how to play other people's music from records. This keeps my ears, fing...
When you're listening to radio and hear the same 20 songs over and over and over, you want a break from it. Sometimes you don't want to hear something that sounds just like everything else on the radio. Eventually, if you hear the same sounds and the...
I lied a lot when I was a kid. Somehow, I still do this today, but maybe in another way - not quite as ridiculously clumsily as I used to. But still, I think making music has a lot to do with it. One invents something that one can't possibly be. With...
I do not believe that people should steal music, but I think that fans need a better alternative, hence why I am such a fan of Apple, where you can simply buy a song for $0.99; it is very easy, it is a value-packed service... and this is a result of ...
When you're making music or playing a song, I find the moments when there are no instruments being played even stronger than when they are being played. Because they add tension. It's also an ego-less thing - a place where you have no ego - when you'...
I've got a few reasons why I've got to maintain stability. I've got into wanting people to hear my music. I've got something I want people to hear because I know they'll like it. They've gotta like it! The songs I've been writing are the sort of thin...
I don't think music affects what words I choose to type in what order, within what punctuation, at this point, because I'm rereading and editing each sentence, at this point, in my published books, probably 100-150 times each, on average, and listeni...
There were times I used to go to parties when I was, you know, like 15-, 16-years-old, and I'd always bring my guitar, and all my friends would be like, sing one of the Smokey songs. And everything I sang was his music, and I could sound just like hi...
These are very difficult times for new artists. Back in the day, a hit song could really seep into a person's DNA with radio and MTV. A hit today is not the same as a hit twenty years ago. Now there is so much competition, it is very hard to reach th...
You can be a rapper born and raised in go-go music, violence, drugs, crack, Reagonomics, and still, if you hear 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,' you're going to find a way to hum along. Guilty pleasures? It don't matter. Sue me - I like the song. To da...
My mom played the recorder. But not having electricity, we had minimal exposure to music. As I got a little older, we had Walkmans and things that were battery-powered, but it would have been nice to be growing up in the iPod era. A tape only has six...
People define themselves to some degree by the music that they listened to as teens. My mom had Elvis. Me, I had 'The Who' and later punk rock. Kids who came up in the '80s had other songs and bands. It's a way of placing ourselves culturally and tem...
I think you really have to remember what you loved about making music in the first place. Ultimately, people can be like, 'We've seen this dude in many movies,' but if they hear a song and they're feeling it, they can look past all the personal thing...
Dan: That's some song you got there. I promise you it could be a big hit. Plus you're beautiful. Gretta: I'm sorry, what's beauty got to do with anything? Dan: Jesus, you're tricky, aren't you?
I would imagine that most of my writing is done spontaneously. I had no intention of writing, and then I'll just walk through the house, and I'll hear this melody, and I'll turn on the tape players and go back to it later on. Some days I'll get 3-5 s...
I actually didn't listen to the Beatles song 'Nowhere Man' when I was writing my book of the same name. What I listened to a lot was 'Abbey Road.' Its disjointedness and its readiness to confuse only to delight were inspiring to me.
He saw us play a few times in fact. I did this song called I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes, and Jimi loved it. He paid me a huge compliment when he told me that he was thinking of doing something similar himself!
In hip hop, it's a lot more about lacing a hot track. I start it, I help mix it, I help write it, I help produce it, I cut the person's vocals. I'm involved from the beginning to the end of a song. I'm not just giving someone a beat, you know?
