ahundredfloors

[ahundredfloors]

Mike Oldfield - Weightless Live at Edinburgh Castle

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Paul McCartney Discusses his Songwriting Technique

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You are tempted to fill your life up with other noise instead. I see other people do it with all these incredibly important things they have to do all the time. It’s very easy to exist in this perpetual state of activity and then you’ll never be nudged in the direction you need to be nudged in if you’re trying to write.

Thom Yorke

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Songwriting is it’s own point

If I need to express something, I express it in ordinary prose. Songwriting is not about expressing something. It’s not about expressing something that you could just as well express another way.

[What is it about, then?]

Again, expression is not the point.

[What is the point?]

Songwriting is its own point. It doesn’t require expression to exist, any more than it requires a political viewpoint or a moral—you don’t need to have a moral for every song. Starting with a moral is a constraint, but it’s definitely not a requirement. Or expressing some emotional point of view is a perfectly good constraint, but it has nothing to do with why one is writing a song. You write songs because you enjoy writing songs.

Interview with Stephin Merritt

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I love writing stuff that isn’t any good; it’s an important part of writing

Stephin Merritt

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Letter to a young artist

A student might see a great work of art and say to himself, "This is a great work of art. I want to make a great work of art, too." And so the student sets out to try to do so. And if he has some talent, he might produce something that looks just as though it were a work of art - almost convincing. If one didn't know any better one might actually mistake it for a work of art. The only problem is that the great work of art that the student so admired was not a product of these same motives. It was the by-product of the artist's personal quest.

Stephen Shore

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Comic Idea

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The thing is that before I can discard the verse, I have to write it. Even if it's bad -- those two happen to be good, I'm presenting the best of my discarded work -- but even the bad ones took as long to write as the good ones. As someone once observed, it's just as hard to write a bad novel as a good novel. It's just as hard to write a bad verse as a good verse. I can't discard a verse before it is written because it is the writing of the verse that produces whatever delights or interests or facets that are going to catch the light. The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.

Leonard Cohen to Paul Zollo

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[You do have whole notebooks of songs?] Whole notebooks. I'm very happy to be able to speak this way to fellow craftsmen. Some people may find it encouraging to see how slow and dismal and painstaking is the process.

Leonard Cohen to Paul Zollo

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Brian Wilson:

"You have to do your job and help songs come into existence."

[ahundredfloors]

Every piece of crap you push out gets you a little closer to the gold bricks you want.

James Garside on Medium