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Sometimes I think I don't have much choice in the matter. It's just what happens, and I'm following my instincts the whole time.

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
Whole
Sometimes
Instincts
Much
Instinct
Time
Following
Think
Choice
Thinking
Choices
Happens
Matter

More quotes by Andrew Bird

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There's always a tension between wanting to write a really concise, instant gratification type song that gets under your skin the first time you hear it, and wanting to really stretch out. I think it's a healthy tension.
Andrew Bird
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Some of my earlier songs are kind of more about mental illness.
Andrew Bird
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I've always had levity in my songs, so I like to turn things over, twist them around, and make fun of myself.
Andrew Bird
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I'm into lately being a little less precious about writing and being like, Okay, what if I just locked myself in my room, pretend that there's someone outside with a gun that's saying, 'Don't come out until you write something.'
Andrew Bird
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Playing the violin and singing and whistling are just three different ways of making sound. It's not trying to replace a band, per se. It's become a completely different thing. And it's not just simply an effect. It's just a very surprisingly intuitive thing.
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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Most records, you build from the drums and bass up. This one, we started with the vocals in Nashville and recorded them live with just the guitars and tried to make that complete and lovely-sounding without any adornment at all. I really wanted to get something with the vocal that I've never gotten before Armchair Apocrypha.
Andrew Bird
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Correlation across replicated environments adds a whole new dimension of complexity of the environment, ... You would expect most application groups to have the same set of policies. In reality, you have differences in policies. That reflects back to that whole process of manual storing in the environment.
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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With digital sound just becomes simply information, not the sum of its parts.
Andrew Bird
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I think life is a wondrous thing. I'm happy to try pretty hard.
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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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 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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Anyway, I'm digressing, but this is just kind of this 10-and-a-half-minute, ambient - you hear cicadas and birds and the wind outside and crickets as I'm swelling the piece. I could never do that on a pop record. I could, but why would I want to be agitating?
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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I can't relate to the process of just disappearing and writing a record, all at the same time, followed by the sort of drudgery of going out on tour and trying to recreate the record, playing the same 12 songs every night.
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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Songwriting requires some sort of ceremony to even get the process started, and it can be somewhat arbitrary.
Andrew Bird