Melody Quotes - page 4

My solos are speech-influenced rhythmically; and harmonically, they're either pentatonic, or poly-scale oriented. And there's the mixolydian mode that I also use a lot...But I'm more interested in melodic things I think the biggest challenge when you go to play a solo is trying to invent a melody on the spot. (Frank Zappa)
Every note leaves in each of us a memory, but it is the melody as a whole that tells a story, the story of someone wanting to get closer to another person and who keeps on trying, despite repeated rejections. View quote
Paulo Coelho
As long as I can say what it is that I need to say, then I'll fit whatever I'm trying to say around a melody. View quote
Alanis Morissette
With thy coming Melody was come. This was thy lot, to feel, create, bestow, And that immeasurable life to know From which the fleshly self falls shrivelled, dead, A seed primeval that has forests bred. View quote
George Eliot
I miss the lack of melody [in current music] as well. I mean, a lot of people think I'm crazy for liking Creed and I like them purely because they sing! I mean, the singer of Creed sings like the guy from Pearl Jam, very close kind of voice. But I like the fact that Creed sing. I don't care if they're a Bible band, Satan band... View quote
Ozzy Osbourne
Melody as revealed in the greatest works of our classics is one of the most noble gifts which an invisible deity has bestowed on mankind. View quote
Richard Strauss
I'll have the music, and then I'll just turn the microphone on, press Play and Record and sing. And whatever comes out ends up being the melody. View quote
Phil Collins
In the green water, clear and warm, Susanna lay. She searched The touch of springs, And found Concealed imaginings. She sighed, For so much melody. View quote
Wallace Stevens
All old Poems, Homer's and the rest, are authentically Songs. I would say, in strictness, that all right Poems are; that whatsoever is not sung is properly no Poem, but a piece of Prose cramped into jingling lines,-to the great injury of the grammar, to the great grief of the reader, for most part! What we wants to get at is the thought the man had, if he had any: why should he twist it into jingle, if he could speak it out plainly? It is only when the heart of him is rapt into true passion of melody, and the very tones of him, according to Coleridge's remark, become musical by the greatness, depth and music of his thoughts, that we can give him right to rhyme and sing; that we call him a Poet, and listen to him as the Heroic of Speakers,-whose speech is Song. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
I Know, I Alone I know, I alone How much it hurts, this heart With no faith nor law Nor melody nor thought. Only I, only I And none of this can I say Because feeling is like the sky - Seen, nothing in it to see. View quote
Fernando Pessoa
Once at the croak of a Raven who crost it, A barbarous people, Blind to the magic, And deaf to the melody, Snarl'd at and cursed me. A demon vext me, The light retreated, The landskip darken'd, The melody deaden'd, The Master whisper'd ‘Follow The Gleam.' (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
His range is so Handelian that he can give the people a universal melody or march with as sure a hand as he can give the Philharmonic Society a symphonic adagio, such as has not been given since Beethoven died. View quote
Edward Elgar
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. View quote
Merle Haggard
A melody is not merely something you can hum. View quote
Aaron Copland
The first thing I do is lay out that melody and figure out how it has to hold here and then finish to land here, because you know in advance you're going to want the melody to catch four things in the action. View quote
Danny Elfman
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. View quote
Danny Elfman
Great melody over great riffs is, to me, the secret of it all. View quote
Steven Tyler
Paul McCartney may be the closest thing our generation has produced to Franz Schubert -- a master of melody, writing tunes anyone can sing, songs that seem to have been there all along. Most people don't realize that "Ave Maria" and "Serenade" were written by Schubert (or that his "Moment Musical in F" so resembles "Martha My Dear"). McCartney writes with similar universality. His "Yesterday" has been recorded by more musicians than any other song in history. Its stepwise melody is deceptively complex, drawing from outside the diatonic scale so smoothly that anyone can sing it, yet few theorists can agree on exactly what it is that McCartney has done. View quote
Daniel Levitin
The coming together of rhythm and melody bridges our cerebellum and our cerebral cortex. View quote
Daniel Levitin
When I first started making music, it was learning other peoples 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. View quote
M. Ward
I have not played the cello in front of an audience since long years but I think I must do it this time. I am going to play a melody from the Catalonian folklore: The singing of the Birds. Birds, when in the sky, go singing: Peace, peace, peace. And this is a melody that Bach, Beethoven and all great people would have admired and loved. And, in addition, it springs up from the soul of my country: Catalonia. (Pablo Casals)
Just the words and melody - that's what moves your emotions. View quote
Kris Kristofferson
Made still a blund'ring kind of melody; Spurred boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in. Free from all meaning, whether good or bad, And in one word, heroically mad. View quote
John Dryden
Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa I keep singing them sad sad songs, y'all. Sad songs is all I know. I keep singing them sad sad songs, y'all. Sad songs is all I know. It has a sweet melody tonight Anybody can sing it any old time. What's in your heart puts you in a groove And when you sing this song, It'll make you're whole body move. View quote
Otis Redding
What? You don't think he's cute?" "I didn't really notice." "How can you not notice when a guy is cute?" Melody stared at her in disbelief. View quote
Nicholas Sparks