{"id":36516,"date":"2012-08-16T19:53:01","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T19:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/bob-dylan-on-his-songwriting-process\/"},"modified":"2012-08-16T19:53:01","modified_gmt":"2012-08-16T19:53:01","slug":"bob-dylan-on-his-songwriting-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/bob-dylan-on-his-songwriting-process\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Dylan on his songwriting process"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bob Dylan on his songwriting process<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

austinkleon<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The master thief<\/a> on his theft:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWell, you have to understand that I\u2019m not a melodist,\u201d he says. \u201cMy songs are either based on old Protestant hymns or Carter Family songs or variations of the blues form.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happens is, I\u2019ll take a song I know and simply start playing it in my head. That\u2019s the way I meditate. A lot of people will look at a crack on the wall and meditate, or count sheep or angels or money or something, and it\u2019s a proven fact that it\u2019ll help them relax. I don\u2019t meditate on any of that stuff. I meditate on a song.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll be playing Bob Nolan\u2019s \u2018Tumbling Tumbleweeds,\u2019 for instance, in my head constantly \u2014 while I\u2019m driving a car or talking to a person or sitting around or whatever. People will think they are talking to me and I\u2019m talking back, but I\u2019m not. I\u2019m listening to the song in my head. At a certain point, some of the words will change and I\u2019ll start writing a song.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s slowly strumming the guitar, but it\u2019s hard to pick out the tune.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote \u2018Blowin\u2019 in the Wind\u2019 in 10 minutes, just put words to an old spiritual, probably something I learned from Carter Family records. That\u2019s the folk music tradition. You use what\u2019s been handed down. \u2018The Times They Are A-Changin\u2019 is probably from an old Scottish folk song.\u201d As he keeps playing, the song starts sounding vaguely familiar.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(via ayjay<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Dylan on his songwriting process austinkleon: The master thief on his theft: \u201cWell, you have to understand that I\u2019m not a melodist,\u201d he says. \u201cMy songs are either based on old Protestant hymns or Carter Family songs or variations of the blues form. \u201cWhat happens is, I\u2019ll take a song I know and simply […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[1539,1782,1783,610,433],"class_list":["post-36516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","tag-emergent-digital-practices","tag-epic-poetry","tag-folk-wisdom","tag-remix","tag-truth","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-9uY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}