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
Melody
Capacity
Overused
Honest
Subtext
Full
Vernacular
Words
Melodies
Cliche
Tricky
Deception

More quotes by Andrew Bird

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The music that I write is often not necessarily full of doom and gloom. You'll notice in most of the darkest songs, the music is actually pretty peaceful and lulling.
Andrew Bird
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I just pay attention to what's in my head. That's my number-one rule.
Andrew Bird
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The problem is, when you're working with orchestras, you only get the orchestra for about two hours before the performance to pull it all together, and that doesn't sound like a real collaboration.
Andrew Bird
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Most of the songs that I appreciate are lyrically vague.
Andrew Bird
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There's kind of this unequaled thrill of playing a half-finished song, it's kind of sense of slight embarrassment like you're blushing. I like doing that. I did that with Eyeoneye and it was almost a curse on the song for a while I debuted it when it was half-finished in a very public way
Andrew Bird
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The instrumental record is a bit subtler. It's the kind of stuff on sound check, when I first pick up my violin and start to play, the kind of melodies that just pour out of me. Some of them sound very classical. Some of them sound experimental, polyrhythmic loops that I make.
Andrew Bird
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There's been this perception that Europeans still hold on to, that they discover the real talented ones in American culture and give them proper credit and that's not true anymore - it used to be. A lot of jazz musicians would get respect in Europe.
Andrew Bird
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Music as a social conduit has always been important to me.
Andrew Bird
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The real drag is trying to fly from country to country, day of show, with all your gear. You get hassled all the time. It's hard trying to keep it together.
Andrew Bird
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People who are thinking about your music almost as much as you are, that almost never happens.
Andrew Bird
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There is something comforting about going into a practice room, putting your sheet music on a stand and playing Bach over and over again.
Andrew Bird
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I'm just trying to get my body in shape so that I can handle it. It's a very physically demanding thing. I've been doing it for 16 years, so I know what I'm going into now. I'm trying to stay calm and not panic.
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The anti-aging advert that I would like to see is a baby covered in cream saying, 'Aah, I've used too much'
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 think when I was pretty young I got really into the tone of my instrument and I remember just playing one note for an hour to just kind of feel the resonance of the violin.
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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The first splurge of creativity is kind of free, and the last 30 percent is painstakingly hard work, but it's good to light a fire and make it public and create that expectation. It's become part of the writing process, really, a way to ask the audience what they think, how they think it's going. I can't write songs in a vacuum.
Andrew Bird
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I am, in some sense, a writer. Even though I kinda downplay the word thing, I do enjoy writing sometimes.
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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My favorite literature to read is fairly dry history. I like the framework, and my imagination can do the rest.
Andrew Bird