Melody Quotations

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

Doing the instrumental thing, you're really looking for the power of the melody to carry the record.

The only thing that I miss lately in all music is somebody that will put out a melody that you can whistle. It doesn't seem like there's anything happening like that.

A good idea for lyrics and a melody to expand on.

I really don't have an ear for pitch. I can't sing at all, I can't hum melodies and I can't write riffs.

In a song, you have to have a lyric that gives us new ideas on how to live, a lyric that makes us feel, and a melody that gives you some kind of body response and emotional response.

With a good melody... music gets me through everything.

They were singing in French, but the melody was freedom and any American could understand that.

Great melody over great riffs is, to me, the secret of it all.

'Dawn (Go Away)' is a sad lyric, but the melody is so happy and fun.

I'll just start laying out the melody exactly where I want it to fall. And then I'll go back and fill it out. Whereas, in other pieces I'm really just going a couple bars at a time.

All of our songs take these really big creative turns and twists throughout the process, so sometimes songs will start out as a melody or some musical chord progressions.

Because if you've got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.

We cling nervously to the melody, but we don't handle it freely, we don't really make anything new out of it, we merely overload it.

The Italians are very unmusical. If I go to a Protestant church in London or Amsterdam or listen to a black choir, I hear four-part harmony. Italians could never do that. In Italy, we all have to sing the melody because we cannot harmonise.

The third note in a chord is what depicts whether it's major or minor. Rhythm and Blues hardly ever uses it because it means that the melody is free to move between major and minor because you're not clashing with the third being depicted one way or the other.

As a kid, on the cotton fields, I had this tune in my head. I hummed it and sang it. It was the same melody as 'When A Man Loves A Woman.' I could never, ever forget it.

I know I can't do everything myself. So I know I specialize in my melodies and I do some of my demo work. I pass it on to my producers who are much better at the production level

'Appetite for Destruction' was the only thing written with lyrics and melody fitting the guitar parts at the same time. After that, I got a barrage of guitar songs that I was supposed to put words to, and I don't know if that was the best thing for Guns.

I think country has the biggest melodies ever.

I get like a melody that comes up and I try to write it down or record it. Hum it into a tape recorder or write it down on some manuscript paper. It could happen at any time, on the road or off the road, but mostly, you know, at home.

I love a great melody and wonderful lyrics that speak from the heart, and my music has that and speaks about it; but there's just something that was really raw and energetic about the early House music. It's hard to describe. It's like you had to go to these parties where the stuff was being played on these huge sound systems to really feel it.

I've been kind of listening to the composer Britten and his rendition of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' The opening track is a choral section where all the weird fairies, who are played by kids in the production, sing. It's a crazy opening melody and chord sequence - really amazing.

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.

I always begin to compose the melody first.

I've always been jealous of rappers, because they can fit so many words into a song and tell a story with lots of details. But when you're a songwriter, you have to fit the words to the melody and you can't fit as much in. I'm just a big fan of storytelling.

The heart of the melody can never be put down on paper.

So, essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything just repeated patterns, musical patterns.

Why can't jazz musicians just leave a melody alone?

A chance to work with the guys from Isis sounded like a lot of fun. I've always been into the atmospheric sounds they had created with that project and felt my sense of melody would meld well with theirs.

Music is creation. In reggae the lyric, the music itself, arrangement, that vibe, such melody - everything within the music moves the people, understand?

Remixes come very quickly, because you already have the melody and the vocals. I have a great passion for music, so it doesn't matter to me if it's a remix or an original production. I don't think about it as, 'Well, I have to spend three hours on a remix or I have to do something all original.'

I'm a sucker for pop melodies, things you can't get out of your head.

We started very slow in America. It was small acoustic shows. We played places like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago and everywhere there has been a great reaction. It has been really lovely. They listen to the lyrics and the melody over there and the reaction has been fantastic.

In Hungary all native music, in its origin, is divided naturally into melody destined for song or melody for the dance.

God gives you the gift of melody or He doesn't - it's as simple as that.

Anything is food for starting a song. A song can start with a lyric idea or a melody or just a sound that inspires.

My music is based on melody and when I play the piano, it's as if I'm singing with them. When you try to transform that into a vocal, there was very little adjustment.

Sometimes when people can't speak English, they hum the melody instead of singing along. Having 20,000 people humming your song is incredible.

I grew up listening to hits, and if I write something I feel, I think that's pretty mass appeal. I'm not very elitist with music. Love is universal; a great melody is universal; it goes around the world; it's not just American. A great song can touch the world.

I try to incorporate melody. Even though I'm screaming, I still like to think I bring melody into screaming.

Melody is king, and don't you ever forget it. Lyrics appear to be out front, but they're not; they're just an accompanying factor. If they're good, you're really in good shape. Lyrics are written to be rewritten.

That big hit 'Get Lucky' is a disco song - not only the melody and the whole concept, but we had one of the great disco guys and one of the best guitarists ever, Nile Rodgers, to play on it. So that's great disco, but a modern disco, because it has great vocoders and synthesizers.

I think my melodies are superior to my lyrics.

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.

Originality is definitely missing from EDM. There are people looking for it and exploring but I feel it's so big now it is just getting milked. House music is losing all its melody as it becomes more about how dirty the drop is and how energetic it is. It loses touch with what music really is.

The creative process is mysterious; a conversation, a ride in the car, or a melody can trigger something.

Of all the soul divas, Gladys Knight was the one for me. Knight's always been about tone and heart, none of the big showboating or extraneous doodling. She nailed a melody and only played a little around the edges like Ma Staple.

I taught myself to play the guitar by listening to Paul Simon records, working it out note by note. He is an incredibly intelligent musician. He's not someone who has a natural outpouring of melody like McCartney or Dylan, who are just terribly prolific with musical ideas.

In a certain way, it's the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

There are only so many notes so there must be only so many melodies.

Being able to say something lyrically, to say something that will do more than just be words, is really hard. It's easy to do when you're writing a chapter of a book or writing poetry, but it's really hard to do when you're confined to a melody line.

I guess I'd like people to be able to forget a lot of things and just enjoy the beauty of harmony and melody for a moment.

My inspiration comes from so many things, it is hard to give credit to one. I find music of all kinds to be a great inspiration. A melody or a lyric can fire my imagination. Exercise is another. Endorphins fuel my thoughts - I tend to work out scenes and dialogue when I am exercising. Reading is also a great inspiration.

The melody is generally what the piece is all about.

[The lyrics and melody] usually come a little simultaneously, but I would say the lyrics are first; usually I have the idea for a story in my head, or few lines.

I really believe in melody.

All my music is very simple in that melody is usually clearly stated.

I have a tape recorder, and I just sing into it. I like to write that way. Sometimes I'll just get melodic ideas, and then I'll go home and sit down and add the lyrics. Or sometimes I'll get a lyric idea that I love. Usually it's pretty combined. Usually I get some kind of a lyrical concept and a melody and work with that.

I have a wonderful piano that I really love: a handmade Yamaha grand. Sometimes I'm sitting there, and it sounds so good that I find some little melody or a phrase that leads me into a song, but probably more often than not, I actually grab a notebook.

I dabbled a little bit in the whole music thing but I've always thought about Bernie Taupin, who is Elton John's lyricist; Elton John is the great melody and song writer but Bernie Taupin is the one who writes all the lyrics. I don't write lyrics, and I never wanted to be in the music business if I was just going to be a puppet in it.

I believe that my newly completed symphony will show the world that atonality and ugly dissonance at the price of giving up inspiration, form, expression, melody and beauty will result in ultimate disaster for the art of music.

I write while I'm walking, on little scraps of paper. If I have a melody going, I can feel it for days.

Melody is an important part of all the music I've written. I think that's why it has been so successful. It's music that sticks in your head.

Melody kept the ball down and had a lot of ground balls. ... I think the more she throws, the better she's going to get. She's getting better with every pitch.

I think the B-52's were a huge influence on Sleater-Kinney. The way that there'd be a really interesting guitar line that'd be really melodic and kind of simplistic, I really related to that. The sense of melody is really intense and fun. It's not just traditional song structures, but it's very melodic and draws you in, in kind of an immediate way.

Traveling to Europe and traveling in the U.S.A. was a much different experience. 'On the Road' exemplified everything glamorous that was happening on this side of the planet. The book puts off some kind of sweet melody - part hope for the world, part nostalgic.

Today there are movements in the arts to reintroduce beauty and narrative and melody and other basic human pleasures. And they are considered radical extremists!

Yeah. Yeah, that was mine. Like I said, Tracii ( Guns ) gave me CD filled with music and I came up with lyrics and melody lines and stuff.

We're really trying hard to bring back this thing with melody and good songs and a different way of doing it than the other pop bands that are out there right now. It doesn't really sound like pop did five years ago. Guitar is back.

Mostly though this desire just springs from an idea for a guitar lead, or vocal melody etc. that I come up with well after the recording is finished.

When I first started making music, it was learning other people's songs and putting them onto four-track. Like Beatles songs and stuff. When I started writing, I used the singing side of the production as a vehicle for melody and lyrical ideas.

That was very ambitious. That's a very well-known song and you changed the melody and did all sorts of unusual things in it, ... That was really kind of cool.

I still have a very nonintellectual, nonjudgmental relationship with melody and the music as I hear it all in my head.

Writing short, catchy pop songs was the hardest thing for me to do. The reason boils down to how things are perceived. The most mystifying thing is why a certain combination of words and melody will blow people's minds, while others - which is 99.9 percent of all songs - fall flat. That for me was the search: to discover how to create songs that had that quality.

Sometimes the word dictated the melody.

It's always music first, or melody and words together, but never words first.

We sang our spacecraft to sleep today with a melody of digital ones and zeros. Stardust has performed flawlessly these last seven years and 2.88 billion miles, and deserves a rest for a while, like the rest of the team.

We're not one of those bands that ever writes while jamming. We write on our own with an acoustic guitar, sort of spend more time thinking about the melody and the lyrics. The band part of it is just a way to present the songs that we've written.

We were trying to make sure the arrangement was good, because the song has a very dynamic and sweeping melody line,

We have to have a melody line. So if one of our sax players needs to stick with one part, maybe the trombone player will grab the melody from another score.

I get a feeling, on a guitar, and I sort of mess around until something resonates with me, and then I just find that what happens is that a melody comes, and with that, words.

What makes a great song - you dont put it into words. You feel it. The perfect lyric. The perfect melody. It makes you feel something.

I've probably played (in Utah) more than anywhere. There's always been an affinity for piano and melody in Utah. People kind of got to know me there, and I've come back so many times. It's always been a great place to perform.

This song probably has the most memorable melody we've ever recorded. I really like how we're using something so catchy to convey these abstract lyrical ideas I have about songwriting. When I sit down to write a song, I always feel like I'm wading into a river where a nurturing female presence guides me and pushes me along when I need it.

On this album, we took the opportunity to show people that hey, we like to make real music. We're not just plugging in our guitars and singing the catchiest melody to sell records.

But other than that, I go from the text and the rhythms of the words. The melody comes from that,

You're trying to get the lyrics and melody to coexist. And sometimes you're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Sometimes I can't sleep 'cause I can't get a melody or a beat out my head, so I just have to wake up and, like, record it on a voice note.

Pretty much we all write together. The guitar player comes up with a melody on the computer. We all throw in stuff and write our own parts.

Eugene Levy came into the office with ""A Mighty Wind"" - that song - with the lyric complete, but the melody wasn't quite there yet, and he and Chris and I worked on the tune - and that's how that one became a three-person song rather than a one-person song. It's a different process every time.

Eugene Levy came into the office with "A Mighty Wind" - that song - with the lyric complete, but the melody wasn't quite there yet, and he and Chris and I worked on the tune - and that's how that one became a three-person song rather than a one-person song. It's a different process every time.

There's more pressure on the melody when you don't have all the embellishments,

In 'Kill Rock n' Roll,' the choruses came about at the moment I was listening to a lot of the Supremes, and if you listen to that part, you can hear a melody and a harmony there that's not too far away from what the Supremes would probably be doing, but there's heavy guitars in the back.

In Hungary al native music is divided naturally into melody destined for song or melody for the dance.

I'm afraid of a cappella. I don't read music, and I have a hard time harmonizing. Basically, I'm a melody singer only.

In the 50s, I wrote the lyrics to an old melody called Melody of Love, which was number one for a while. It later turned into a major hit.

In the creative industries, there are few things more exciting than a zinger - a thought, idea, line, plot device - anything really, that just totally works in a fundamentally new and fresh way. It's like a uniquely lovely melody or a new taste idea in cooking. Something special, something new, something wonderful. They're also very rare.

In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column; / In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.

Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.