Quote

Melodies are just honest. They can only be what they are. Words have the capacity for deception. Theyre all full of subtext, and some of them are cliche and overused and vernacular. Theyre tricky. All I can say is, words are tricky.

Andrew Bird

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Andrew Bird
Age: 51
Born: 1973
Born: July 11
Fiddler
Film Editor
Guitarist
Jazz Musician
Musician
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Chicago
Illinois
Andrew Wegman Bird
Andrew W. Bird
Full
Vernacular
Words
Melodies
Cliche
Tricky
Deception
Melody
Capacity
Overused
Honest
Subtext

More quotes by Andrew Bird

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Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.
Andrew Bird
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Honestly, I didn't have the patience for biology or history in an academic sense, but I always liked the kind of big questions.
Andrew Bird
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Pretty much any given day, barring some major distraction, I get melodies coming to me. Lyrics don't come quite as easily. So I've been inventing little projects and challenges to sort of kick my ass with the lyrics.
Andrew Bird
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I finished touring the last record and I started recording new .I never really left the bubble, which is I think a good thing. I was just very focused. Maybe I should have taken a break or something, and not done such a long push.
Andrew Bird
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I'm not a home-studio guy. I spend a lot of time working by myself developing songs, but I really need some other counterpart to help me pull it all together, because you go nuts working if I had to finish an entire project all within my own head.
Andrew Bird
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Songwriters can sort of get away with murder. You can throw out crazy theories and not have to back it up with data or graphs or research.
Andrew Bird
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I think any songwriter or record, no matter how good it is, can become tedious if it's the same person's point of view. After four tracks, you start to get worn down no matter how good it is. It can be relentlessly good, but it's still going to wear you out.
Andrew Bird
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It's not set in stone. I like to keep it rolling and changing, and so I am like, Great, I get to remake my song.
Andrew Bird
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Music as a social conduit has always been important to me.
Andrew Bird
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What you see with your eyes when you're making music is going to have a profound effect on what you hear.
Andrew Bird
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When I start asking my friends, What do you think this means? And it leads to way more interesting conversations than what it actually ends up meaning in the dictionary. Like apocryphal, for instance.
Andrew Bird
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I still kind of believe this absurd line that if you have to write it down, it's not worth remembering.
Andrew Bird
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I don't write poetry and then strum some chords and then fit the words on top of the chords.
Andrew Bird
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The earth almost looks like it's packed down and dense from so many feet treading over it.
Andrew Bird
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The melodies come out so strong that I'm like, Oh, crap. It's really better if they could both be kind of able to compromise, but the melodies, even more recently, they come out very fully cast and formed.
Andrew Bird
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The idea of writing songs because you're depressed and you need to communicate it somehow, that isn't really true for me.
Andrew Bird
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A good espresso to me is a little bit salty you just become used to a good taste. Anytime I go into a new place and they don't clean their machine properly or the water temperature isn't right, it tastes awful.
Andrew Bird
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The weirdest time is when I'm having to explain myself all day to journalists, and then I don't perform, so there's no release, just a lot of self-consciousness. Then what do you do with that at the end of the day? How do you release your brain from talking about yourself all day?
Andrew Bird
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Playing the violin and singing and whistling are just three different ways of making sound.
Andrew Bird
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Some of your best songs come from a desperate attempt to escape, so sitting in an airport for hours I can just start pulling out little fragments of songs from my head. A lot of times a melody will just occur to me and be my companion for a couple of months.
Andrew Bird