In the age of the mp3, you gotta make the package special, someth... by Zach Condon

In the age of the mp3, you gotta make the package special, something that's worth owning.

Zach Condon

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Categorized in : Age Special Mp3

The more I know, the more I realise I don't know. And the more I realise I'll never truly understand.

realising knows

Raucous drunken trumpets and instrumentation tend to guide the way you think. They can give you a path to follow lyrically.

giving way thinking

You always know when a real inspiration is behind the melody, arrangements, even lyrics. And I know that's really vague, but it's true.

melody inspiration real

Often when I find myself listening to music, at least 60 to 70% of it is foreign, so I don't understand a word of it. Melody to me will always be a million times more important than words.

melody important listening

As a teenager and a young adult, I never felt like my own story was interesting enough to tell, so I always wrote lyrics from someone else's perspective - told someone else's story.

teenager perspective interesting

I think that sonically, music speaks volumes more than words do, and I have always thought that and will continue to think that for the rest of my life.

volume speak thinking

I write one step at a time, always finishing off the part I'm working on before even thinking about the next part. I need to hear it all together before deciding what goes next. I even mix before moving on...in other words, I write by recording.

writing moving thinking

Lyrics are what I tend to tear hair out over and they're where I tend to feel weak musically, if I'm being very honest. It is not something I feel like I know anything about; I would not consider myself a writer. I just want to sing, I just want to sing a melody, I just want to feel a melody, and be part of the song, and everything else is not so important.

important hair song

I'm sure that's every adolescent's complaint about their home town. When a city is unstimulating, you get pretty isolated.

towns cities home

I want a song that raises the hair on the back of my neck when I sing it live and I want to feel it every time.

I was a very good student until about sophomore year, and that's when I just became so disillusioned with the whole thing that I just became an awful student. I was still making good grades. But I was cutting class three days a week and faking papers that I got off the internet.

cutting class years

I'm very flash and burn - the first thing that comes to mind is obviously the best idea, and that's because it should come out of a natural place, and if you don't do that then you're writing someone else's music, not your own.

mind writing ideas

My dad is obsessed with music, so I was raised around this guitar player that really wanted me to be a guitar player.

guitar dad player

The way Jacques Brel writes a story, getting into the character, bringing out all his faults and qualities in the same song.... Not that I could ever write in such an epic way, but it really is a different way to go about writing lyrics...and I find that quite inspiring.

writing song character

I just reached the point where I realised, I need to stop repeating myself if I'm ever actually going to enjoy the music I'm creating.

creating enjoy needs

I can't work in Brooklyn. Unless I'm completely locked away in a studio, there's just too much distraction and stimulation.

There was always a unique Beirut sound, it was always there, and so this time I just dove straight into that, instead of daydreaming and wandering.

dove daydreaming unique

It's just not an image I had ever put out about myself - the bedroom synth guy. The whole thing seemed ridiculous.

bedroom ridiculous guy

As much as I try to grow as a lyricist, I tend to laugh at even calling myself that, because I think that my actual talents lie more in arrangements than they do words.

laughing lying thinking

I didn't realize how different our band's senses of melody actually were. I would write a part that just made perfect sense to me, but for them, it was mind-boggling. Likewise, they could play stuff with relative ease that I never could have. If there was something lost in translation melodically, it wouldn't work at all - we'd just be 17 people in a giant room staring awkwardly at each other. When that happened, I'd go home, figure out what was wrong, fix it, and then return to smooth sailing.

perfect home writing