"If you write songs you have an idea how they're going to sound"
About this Quote
Songwriting isn’t mystical inspiration here; it’s premeditation. Fred Frith’s line has the blunt practicality of a working composer pushing back against the romantic myth that music arrives fully formed from the ether. “If you write songs you have an idea how they’re going to sound” is almost comically obvious on its surface, and that’s the point: he’s puncturing the pose. Writing, in Frith’s framing, is already an act of listening ahead of time. Even before a band rehearses or a studio mic turns on, the composer has a mental mix: contour, rhythm, timbre, attitude.
The subtext is a quiet argument about authorship and control. In scenes where improvisation and experimentation are treated as higher truths, Frith reminds you that intention still lives upstream. You can leave room for accidents without pretending you had no plan. The word “songs” matters, too. A song implies structure, recall, a repeatable identity. That pushes against the idea that composition is just documenting spontaneity. He’s describing a craft where the future is sketched in advance, even if the final performance redraws the lines.
Contextually, Frith comes from a world (Henry Cow, the broader experimental and avant-rock continuum) that constantly negotiates the boundary between score and free play. The quote lands like a calibration: yes, we can embrace noise, collage, weird instrumentation, communal process. Still, the act of writing carries an audible hypothesis. And if you don’t have that hypothesis, you’re not writing songs; you’re just recording what happened.
The subtext is a quiet argument about authorship and control. In scenes where improvisation and experimentation are treated as higher truths, Frith reminds you that intention still lives upstream. You can leave room for accidents without pretending you had no plan. The word “songs” matters, too. A song implies structure, recall, a repeatable identity. That pushes against the idea that composition is just documenting spontaneity. He’s describing a craft where the future is sketched in advance, even if the final performance redraws the lines.
Contextually, Frith comes from a world (Henry Cow, the broader experimental and avant-rock continuum) that constantly negotiates the boundary between score and free play. The quote lands like a calibration: yes, we can embrace noise, collage, weird instrumentation, communal process. Still, the act of writing carries an audible hypothesis. And if you don’t have that hypothesis, you’re not writing songs; you’re just recording what happened.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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