Zach Condon Quotes
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I think that within the world of music that we work in, which is so not perfect, I think that you really do have to learn to accept your own mistakes as part of the beauty of music itself.
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It's just not an image I had ever put out about myself - the bedroom synth guy. The whole thing seemed ridiculous.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There is a beauty to touring - to be honest, there's a way that music connects and you really feel the actual reaction of people to the music that you're making, and I feel like if I didn't do that I just wouldn't know, and I don't think my music would be the same.
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I became very aware of what I was used to relying on, almost tricks. It's funny because I could feel myself creating a formula and sticking with it and I just told myself, 'That's not me, that's not really how I am, god forbid I have developed a formula - it's music; songwriting.' It's heretic, honestly, in the church of music, so I had to unwind a few tricks in order to get past it.
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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.
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I have tried to write soundtracks, and the main problem with those was that the directors often had in their minds a much stronger sense of what they wanted to hear, than what I was willing to give them, and I guess there was no way to say, "Well why don't you write your scene around my music?" Because that's just cocky and awful.
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I try to shut my brain down as much as possible. And let the melodies flow, if possible.
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I think it's become much harder because I'm more afraid of every step I take. I'm more aware of its ramifications, I'm more aware of the less creative aspects of music - like the business-side of things for example.
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The greatest thing about my house was that I was in the far end of it and I could make as much noise as I wanted. By the time I moved out, I had a full-sized piano, two full-sized organs, bits and pieces of a drum kit, and a whole computer set up for Pro Tools. I had this mattress in between the piano and the organ. That was the only walking room.
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It's a natural tendency of mine to not even listen to lyrics.
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When a city is unstimulating, you get pretty isolated.
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My thought with harmonies and melodies in general, is that if it doesn't come right away then it's never going to come at all.
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I could probably spend the next five years reworking an album from ten years ago, if given the chance, to make it better - make it best, so to speak.
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It's a little cheeky; growing up in Santa Fe was kind of a weird experience, because it's such a touristy town. So sometimes it feels a little like you're in a town that's just on display. You walk around downtown and all the shops are galleries or high end boutiques, so it can feel like you don't belong there even though you are from there.
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I'm not an amazing trumpet player. It's mostly smoke and mirrors. You shake the trumpet and it starts to vibrate in a ridiculous drunken way, or you flop notes at the right time and you don't have to play stuff that would take seven years to learn.
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I released that side of things really as kind of an introduction to where I came from musically, back in the day when all I had was a keyboard, a drum machine, and a four-track. So I was doing these little synth-pop ditties, and it's how I learned to write.
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When I came back to America, I realized that world music is no joke, it really has a lot to it.
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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.
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I can't work in Brooklyn. Unless I'm completely locked away in a studio, there's just too much distraction and stimulation.
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I'm writing songs about New York. A lot of them carry the names of neighborhoods in Long Island. Maspeth, Montauk. I'm getting into the idea of a F. Scott Fitzgerald-esque Long Island back when New York was...New York.
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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.
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I dropped out of high school and I tried to go to community college for a little while. I can't be a student. I always hated that lifestyle.
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I put myself in the studio and I really made sure to say, 'Well, if I would normally reach for a trumpet, why don't I reach for the next nearest instrument instead?'
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I felt like I needed to get a few side projects out of my system before I settled in to do the new record. Usually what's asked of you, everything's a year cycle. When you get caught up in that cycle, it can be kind of brutal, actually. It was good I got to take a year off, with no pressure coming from anywhere.
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If every element of the song doesn't come within the first hour of writing, then you're never going to get it - if that makes sense. It's kind of like you need to be in a mental state where everything is so reactionary that you don't double-think anything, and so if it's not immediate then it's probably not going to happen at all, and you should probably toss the song.
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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.
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