In this post, you will find great Recording Quotes from famous people, such as Sonny Rollins, Weyes Blood, Elvis Costello, Curt Smith, Shawn Amos. You can learn and implement many lessons from these quotes.
I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz.
The White House tapes, recording Nixon‘s nefarious doings from Watergate to the bombing of Vietnam, made frightening reading once made public on the orders of Congress.
‘Hairdresser Blues‘ was written when I was deep in a ten-year depression that I escaped shortly after recording that album. I don’t like that album.
At the time, the only options were playing the local county fair. Now with American Idol and younger recording artists that have come out, there is more of an opportunity.
The best recording is the one you bring with you in your mind.
I don’t work out a lead section and practice it for a day and then lay it down. I don’t do that. The first time I do something I think is expressive or really cool, that’s what’s actually on the recording.
I just want to keep playing music and keep recording. I feel like my best days are ahead.
Little things can make such a big difference during recording.
I got out of high school, bought a recording studio and started operating it as an engineer and a producer.
I’ve always loved music and loved recording.
Why is it surprising that scientists might have long hair and wear cowboy boots? In fields like neuroscience, where the events you are recording are so minute, I suspect scientists cultivate a boring, reliable image. A scientist with a reputation for flamboyance might be suspect.
When digital technology started becoming the norm, you’ve got 50, 60, 70 years of recordings on tapes that are just deteriorating. Like, a two-inch reel of recording tape won’t last forever. It dissolves. It will disappear.
‘The Outsider‘ is a culmination of a lot of things I’ve been working diligently toward as a recording artist. Hopefully it will render my past pigeonholing obsolete while positioning me more solidly as a socially conscious American singer/songwriter. Wouldn’t that be entertaining?
There are so many ingredients that are contained in ‘The Wall’ that were not necessarily contained in other Pink Floyd records, particularly following on from ‘Animals,’ which was very spare and sparse. Production on it was much more massive, the complexity of the recording was much more intense.
When I’m on the microphone and I’m recording, or onstage, or shooting a video, I’m doing my job. When I’m not, I’m being myself.
We had a bond creatively that came out of ‘Lady Marmalade.’ It was our link. And people don’t know this, but P!nk and I actually met when we were both 16 years old in Philadelphia. I was recording my first album, and we were working with the same producers, so I originally knew her as Alecia.
We just weren’t a hip band. I mean we recorded our second album in Bath at a time when everyone else was recording in New York or Los Angeles.
Being a performer and recording artist and playing ‘World of Warcraft‘ – that’s a pretty time-intensive combination.
When I do my music, I don’t even go to the studio. It’s just me and my engineer in a dark room somewhere, recording.
The transition from fan to performer to recording artist, for me, was like learning how to dive… and each board got higher and higher.
It’s so hard to listen to an album you created and without remembering where you were when you wrote it or referencing the the recording experience.
The reality of recording, it’s one of the most intimate things that an artist ever does because if you do it right, you’re exposing yourself, and you’re expressing your emotions, and those are the key attributes to a big record that really connect with people.
I’m not actually a very keen performer. I like putting shows together. I like putting events together. In fact, everything I do is about the conceptualizing and realization of a piece of work, whether it’s the recording or the performance side.
Like for ‘Black Nails,’ I just had black nails – and I never have black nails. It was my first and last time getting black nails. And that’s so not normal for me. So when you’re recording, you’re up at the mic and you gotta name the file, so I just look down and I’m like, ‘Black Nails!’ That’s literally what it was.
I started recording because I was always complaining about the records that I was getting of my songs. At least if I did them and messed them up, I wouldn’t have anyone else to blame.
I came into my own, you might say, in terms of putting out my first record quite late in life. And yet there’s some authors and photographers and even probably recording artists that didn’t really hit their stride until their mid-50s.
Distortion pedals are just fantastic for not only rehearsing quietly but also for all those moments when you are going to play in highly compressed environments like radio, television, or recording against compressed loops.
Believe it or not, most people think of me as a recording artist, but actually the way I think of myself and the way I earn my living is as a performing artist.
I tend to use different microphones, different mic techniques, and different recording mediums – like analogue tape – that evoke multiple eras of recorded music at the same time.
I’ve never stopped writing, never stopped recording.
Our writing, especially during ‘Boxer‘ – the recording process was the writing process, which is not the way I would advise anyone else to do it.
It varies from song to song, although Buck Owens and I recently collaborated on writing a duet together and am looking forward with a great deal of anticipation to recording that track for the new studio album.
I found my voice singing pop and ballads, almost all of them Colombian artists. When I was 16, my family gave me a recording session with some Colombian producers, and that’s where I started my career.
When you’re recording classic songs, you’ve got to kind of make them your own, and you can’t always worry about what people are going to think.
Our studio is kind of built into our home, so it’s a place you can ramble, and we can do a pretty good recording here. The band is really comfortable her.
I really don’t think records should be made in the manner where you sit and write, and when you’re finished writing, you start recording. That just seems conventional and old-fashioned to me.
I love recording and I love everything – videos, everything like that – but playing live is what does it for me.
I’ve always loved the recording studio.
One day, we were going to the studio for John’s recording session, and as we were leaving to get to the studio, in the elevator, all of a sudden, John leaned over and gave me a kiss. He said, ‘I’ve been waiting to do this all day.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ What happened was, he’d liked me.
As a child, I would say that I wanted to become a dancer to honour music. For me, dancing is the physical translation of the audio recording.
I think that technology has both introduced new sounds but also allowed an increasingly painterly approach to recording music as you can now paint over what you’ve done and more and more refine an existing performance.
Recording should be fun.
If I have a song that I feel is really one of my best songs, I like it to have a formal studio recording because I believe that something being officially released on a studio record gives it a certain authority that it doesn’t quite have if it comes out on a live album or is just a part of your show, you know.
I have a recording that I did of instrumental songs.
Touring and promoting and recording take a lot of time, it’s just getting the right balance that’s important.
Definitely later on in the ‘Life is Strange’ season one recording, we were all pretty tuned into who these characters were. There wasn’t a whole lot of finagling that needed to be done, I don’t think.
I’m always working and recording. It’s just what makes me happy.
My dad was always there, even though he wasn’t living in our house. He was always on the phone, always just a car ride away. Whenever he had a new recording, we would be the first to get the acetate. And it would say, in Dad’s handwriting, ‘Play it loud.’
We’re always recording music, writing songs.
We want to be able to make our own songs and write our own arrangements. We want to incorporate the live sound so we can be free onstage and in the studio recording. That way we can come up with original and creative stuff.
Idol has pretty much taken me out of my recording and out of my choreography. I have managed to slip in some choreography jobs. And I’ve been writing songs for other artists.
A circumstance that I was dealing with when recording my second album was I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
There was a recording studio in my school, and I knew this kid who had a key, so I’d write lyrics in school while I was in class, and then, in a 10-minute break, I recorded the song ‘Hurt‘ in one go at the school studio.
I always knew that we were going to be successful and accomplish and succeed at our dreams. There was never a doubt in my mind. When we were recording ‘Appetite For Destruction‘, we all knew.
I used to feel that musical knowledge and emotional truth-telling were antagonistic. But I was too curious about chords and instruments and recording to stay locked in that mentality.
I started a recording studio. I started producing people and doing remixes.
I am taking a break, but not a huge break because the Maiden record is actually happening right now, and I am recording it as we speak, well not right as we speak, but close.
Acting is very sacred. Anyone who stands in front of a crew with the camera recording their emotions is a brave individual.
I also have a recording studio that I use to produce bands.
When I first came to New York I was a dancer, and a French record label offered me a recording contract and I had to go to Paris to do it. So I went there and that’s how I really got into the music business. But I didn’t like what I was doing when I got there, so I left, and I never did a record there.
I like being in a recording studio. I like watching a song go from the simplicity of the original music.
Like most things that happen with Sabbath, it happened all of a sudden. I was intending on doing some recording, but out of the blue, Sharon called up and said she wanted us to do these gigs with Ozzy. I said that if everybody else was up to it then I would love to do it.
I hate re-recording. I like singing, but I don’t like recording a song over and over, making it too perfect.
I was successful with mediocre material because of a good recording voice that people really liked at that time.
I’ve always got a notepad on or a voice recorder recording ideas.
Money definitely does not equal success in recording.
My goal has always been to make classic records, classic albums. Sometimes the recording process and the era it was recorded in means the production leans in a particular way, but to me they are all part of the same process.
When I leave a recording session, there is usually a lot of paranoia or superstition on my part, like I’m afraid to hear what we’ve done.
You control your future, your destiny. What you think about comes about. By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you most want to be. Put your future in good hands – your own.
‘Melodies’ is just about having fun! The song’s message is about being who you are and having a blast. I had such a great time recording it – I’m glad it’s my first single.
My old man was a musician – that’s what he did for a living. And like most fathers, occasionally he’d let me visit where he worked. So I started going to his recording studio, and I really dug it.
When I was recording music, I’d record all the parts myself, and I wouldn’t let other people in; that’s essentially what Blood Orange is the result of; me trying to find the most comfortable I can be with everything.
Where Charlie Christian left off, Papoose started a new thing; he was an innovator of the guitar. The things he did during his recording career with Fats Domino in the Fifties and Sixties until the day he died was as much a part of the music of New Orleans as anybody else has had to offer.
To me, finding sounds, or even recording, is a compositional process. The studio is kind of an instrument.
I actually quite like promo, which is quite odd for an artist, but recording’s not the easiest thing.
I think I’ve done more recording in the past 10 years than most people, but it’s all been directed toward film composing and soundtracks. Just the same, it’s been great.
When I was a kid, my favorite show was ‘Happy Days.’ If I could have heard a recording of the cast of Happy Days just sitting around having fun, talking about the show in a party atmosphere, I’d have lost my mind.
Personal songs take a little more to record, definitely. We had to bring our souls into the recording studio. It was us being very vulnerable. We heard that our fans can kind of feel that.
I don’t do any special preparations before recording any number, nothing like deep breathing or meditation.
I’ve always been fascinated with the juxtaposition of technology in music, not only in recording, but in the keyboard. It’s amazing the way you can apply technology to an art form.
Actually, recording the Suite Chic album was so much fun and while working on this new album, people that I’ve worked with from Suite Chic has lend their voice.
When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavored to do its duty towards them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man. The photograph thus taken has been almost the embodiment of a prayer.
In ‘The Smurfs,’ I was actually a live action character. So, I was a real person in that movie. But I was working with animated characters, which is very strange because they’re off recording their work, and we’re kind of reacting to nothing when we’re doing the film.
I’ve lived with my dyslexia and gone on to have a successful recording career, but academically I never had a chance in hell because I didn’t fall into that bracket.
There’s something special about recording something that’s as personal as your own songs.
Every free day, every weekend, I am in a recording session. I’m very lucky to have such supportive people around me.
Very often, I don’t make it through moments of recording because it is genuinely funny and absolutely ridiculous that a 60-year-old grown man is making these noises.
There’s a guy at the record company who’s 30, and he says, I would not listen to these songs except in this context. Somehow the recording process, the arrangements, make it more accessible.
I’m thinking about recording everything to tape like it’s 1991 and seeing how that sounds.
You have a feeling when you’re recording, like, ‘This is gonna translate really well,’ and when you see it live, and it kind of proves that, that’s an amazing feeling.
In the studio, if things go wrong, you stop things and fix them. I have never been in a recording studio, really, where the people in the booth were not interested in making a very good album. It’s often a light-hearted atmosphere but serious at the same time.
I saw Damien Rice in Dublin when I was 13, and that inspired me to want to pursue being a songwriter… I practised relentlessly and started recording my own EPs. At 16, I moved to London and played any gigs I could, selling CDs from my rucksack to fund recording the next, and it snowballed from there.
I’m no diva but I can be annoying in a recording studio. Of course I try to be a diva in terms of confidence of performance and owning a song but I’ve never behaved like one in terms of the negative connotations of the word.
My entire life, I wake up, and at some point in the afternoon, I head toward some kind of musical recording device. My entire life.
The writing and recording process is what I enjoy, it allows me to be creative and work with different artists and producers.
I would be involved with music whether I had a career or not. I’m always going to be writing songs and recording them.
When I was recording my first solo album ‘Imaginaryland,’ I was listening to a lot of movie scores.
I made a conscious decision when I was recording ‘Acoustic Soul’ to – and this is one of my mantras – follow the music and let the chips fall where they may.
I did recording sessions as a musician as well as a background vocalist and enjoyed every minute of it. I remember singing harmony with Waylon Jennings on a few songs that were hits. Chet Atkins always put me up so high that I strained to hit every note. It was a lot of fun.
I’m always freaking people out because I’ll be out somewhere and I’ll hear someone say something and then later on I’ll say it again word for word. It’s almost like recording it in your head.
Music is also a part of who I am so I’m thinking about recording an album.
I have to prioritize: father first, and then a pastor and a recording artist and entrepreneur. I try to put everything in proper perspective, and then the proper priority.
Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!
I was ill in ’98. By the end of ’99 I was recording and recovering.
I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device – recording and projecting.
More live recording. I have missed the boat over my career by not doing every second or third CD live because things happen onstage that don’t happen in the studio.
Being on a K-pop label and agency, everything’s taken care of for you. The music is set up for you. Your food, manager, practice room, recording studios – all these things are in the palm of your hand. However, you know the compromise of what you can actually do or say.
You don’t need 30 million people to listen to your podcast. If 10,000 people listen to your podcast, which is not a hard number to achieve, then 10,000 people are listening, and you can build a community, and literally change the world just recording into a microphone.
I used to have a radio show. That’s how I started foolin’ around with recording.
Recording – once something’s done, it’s done, there’s not much you can do about it. It’s out there and you just have to pray to the gods.
We’re a band that keeps writing and recording – we don’t know when it’s over.
When you first start writing a song, it’s fun, then when you start recording it, it’s fun, but by the time you’ve finished recording it, you’re sick of it.
The late ’70’s and early ’80s is the zenith of a certain craftsmanship in sound recording.
There was a period when STP and I weren’t making music – we weren’t getting along very good at all. But I had my studio, so I was writing and recording a lot of music. But something told me not to put it out. It was all stream of consciousness; it was clever, but it didn’t really have substance.
I’ve been with Def Jam Records for five years and they gave me my first recording contract so for that I’m forever grateful.
Abbey Road was actually one of the first studios I ever got the chance to go to. A friend of mine won a competition and got the chance to spend a day recording there – that’s when I was around 15 – and I was the only one who could engineer out of all of us.
I’m a recording studio guy, an engineer, a songwriter and a guitar player, in that order.
I don’t have any particular goals in making a recording. In a way the recording is itself the goal. The music comes into my mind, and from there the main job is to give form to it.
A lot of our tracks have sounded a lot better than I thought they would because of recording, mixing, and because I probably didn’t hear it that way. I’m not a songwriter.
We used to do ‘Venus‘ live for a long time but never got ’round to recording it because people would always say it’s too old-fashioned a song.
I did my thing with Jive. I was a national recording artist, but I had run into a wall.
I was in school with Dweezil Zappa, Frank Zappa’s son, and we had a band. Only in L.A. could stuff like that happen. We would hang out in Frank Zappa’s studio, and we released a single in 1982 on his label. I was 12, and that was the first recording experience I had. To top it off, Eddie Van Halen produced it.
I’ve been getting a bit of writing done, a bit of recording done and I just want to get out as much new music as I can before I end up spontaneously combusting.
When I broke 20, I said to myself, ‘I will give concerts until I’m approximately 30.’ And I made it a year and a half late, but, nevertheless, that’s what I did. When I broke 30, I said, ‘I think I should be recording until I’m about 50.’
I think I definitely enjoy recording, but I think it’s more fun to go out and perform live, because it’s like instant gratification, you know? You feel the response immediately.
I learned that being sort of legitimately recognized by a legitimate and traditional recording academy, it made people look at us a bit differently. Not everyone, but some people.
It was always difficult for me to listen to my singing voice for the first 20 years or so. I mean, I really enjoyed singing, and I enjoyed doing live shows, but being in a recording studio and having to hear my voice played back to me would really drive me up the wall.
I was following my muse and I was very fortunate in having good people around me and it turned out to be a pretty good recording in my opinion.
I want recording to be fun.
The thing that’s cool about the recording booth is that it’s so perfunctory, so cut-to-the-chase.
Gaslight has a specific way of playing and recording that’s sort of become the way now.
It doesn’t pay to get too familiar with your songs. Going off to do other things in between recording sessions gives you a chance to think.
I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist, that I wasn’t saying anything.
My history is really playing live – not writing or recording.
I’m relentless when it comes to writing and recording.
When I started to recording, I gave the name of Honeyboy, but my people only knew me by Honey.
I’m a recording artist, a performing artist and a producing artist. All those things have everything to do with the outcome of my shows. I get myself studying every part of the game and not everyone has the characteristic to do that. In my mind, you need all three to become an artist.
I’ve been more and more into production lately, and I really, really love that. I love recording.
It’s kind of odd when you think of Loretta Lynn, when she was first traveling and recording country music. It was all built through word of mouth. If you pleased the fans, they would pass it around to their friends and family.
I’m quite proud of my piano playing. Robin‘s never played a note on the piano at our recording sessions. I just wish I could be appreciated musically now.
When I was doing ‘In the Heights,’ I was the co-music supervisor for ‘The Electric Company’ on PBS, so I was writing songs all day, doing the show, staying up until 3 A. M. Writing more songs, recording demos in the intermission in my dressing room.
Most of the time with video games, you’re recording by yourself.
There’s this weird game called ‘Blueberry Garden.’ For that game an artist recorded some piano music, but evidently he only had a really terrible microphone on top of the piano, and I really liked it and wanted to experiment with that. So, I made piano recording and really mangled it, and kept experimenting with the technique.
It is not that I don’t like contemporary country music because I do. I love it. I have recorded a lot and have had great success recording records that have not been very traditional country records.
I am such a gearhead. In my recording studio, I personally engineer and edit everything on computers.
My guitar playing has not developed as much as I think it could because I never practice. I only play when I’m writing or recording or when I’m playing on tour. When I’m sitting around at home, I never play.
I’ve made music for grownups most of my life as a singer/songwriter – often with my band, Nine Stories – recorded many albums, and 10 years ago I started recording kid’s music, too.
I don’t like the way recording to digital sounds. Most of the time, when I’m recording to two-inch tape, I still have a romantic vision of how songs sounded coming out of the radio when I was younger, and how they sounded coming out of my little four-track cassette player.
I don’t feel guilty about the music I love. If you feel guilty about something you dig, then you should stop feeling guilty about it. One of my favorite albums to this day is the 10th anniversary ensemble cast of ‘Les Miserables,’ the ultimate cast recording, and it is still something I love listening to top to bottom.
Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.
No compression or as little as possible – that’s how you get a good recording.
I get very deep into the writing and recording process.
For the most part, the real work is done in the songwriting stage and recording; the next step is presenting to people.
I write all the time, even if it means recording in the hotel room. I write on the plane, anywhere, anytime I’m inspired or have ideas.
There was never going to be a right time for a band that was still recording and had health in its environment, had made a very good record and was playing well.
I’d gotten used to recording background vocals perfectly, doing 18 takes of them until they line up. Not recognizing the inherent beauty in each performance, but just making something good.
Back in the day, I used to be in the studio recording 20 hours a day. And that was all of the time. I still record a lot of hours, but I don’t go as long as I used to.
There are some movie stars in Hollywood that are so scared, they also tell the reporter that they are recording them, in case there is something wrong with what they wrote about them in the papers.
My whole life was writing, recording and touring over and over again. At some point I realised I wasn’t enjoying myself any more.
For a movie, you have to make sure the lyrics are consistent with the rhythm that is given to you. But, at times, during the song’s recording, you find out that your words are not appropriate for the track, and so you have to change them.
When the Beatles cut old rock n’ roll, they were recording music still in their performing repertoire, and besides, they never thought of the music as old.
What producers did was mostly recording in the studio, so it never changed our sound just that much.
I just want to keep making music, recording and trying different things. I don’t want to do the same thing all the time.
Make sure you know what you are signing when you sign a recording contract.
I did grow up with Michael Landau, my brother since we were 12 years old. That was competition but in the best way. He is such a monster, always was, and we had a blast growing up playing in bands and early recording and are still the best of pals.
Before recording my ‘Homeland‘ audition on my iPhone in my bedroom in Streatham, I hadn’t worked or had an audition in the U.K. for nine months.
I started off as a recording engineer and a beatmaker. I was this skater kid that would skateboard to auditions, and then I would use the money I’d make and buy a bunch of equipment and make a bunch of beats. I still am that kid, just with a little more money.
When I met Johnny Cash, I didn’t know what to ask: where were you born, who was your favorite recording artist, what’s your favorite color – I didn’t know.
There is a common misconception that when you’re a singer working for a recording company you get to pick everything you’re doing. Very few people have been accorded such a luxury.
I was recording dance tracks when the auditions for ‘Popstars: The Rivals‘ came along.
The recording companies are continuing to look at ways to buy short and sell long. So now they give recording deals to groups of people who we refer to as ‘garage bands’ – they are amateurs who are bought for nothing and it’s really a shame.
In this day and age, though, no matter how many people you play for, if you’re playing with a band like Blink, millions of people will see it thanks to YouTube and everything recording it.
Some people take off recording cycles, but I record year round.
All my writing takes place during the recording of the master tapes. I never do have songs when I start up an album. I actually write them while I record.
In Spanish, I record a lot of single-voice tracks, and in English, I ‘stack‘ a lot of voices, so it’s very different, and I think I got so used to recording in Spanish for six years that it was really refreshing and challenging to get in and record ‘Double Vision’ in English.
I’m always working on new songs. With the technology these days, any idiot can record on Pro Tools on your laptop. All you have to do is plug a microphone into the input jack and anybody can have their own recording studio. So I’m always down in my basement, singing along to riffs or whoever I’m collaborating with.
I put out a recording of me singing mostly jazz because I wanted people to know I’m coming from a jazz background.
When it comes to the recording and writing, it’s still mostly Mickey and I. But now there’s this whole live entity that’s a whole different thing, and it seems to be where we’re gaining the most popularity.
By the time 1997 had rolled around, I had been in the music business for all my life, from the age of 15. I started recording professionally when I was 18. I had seen how record companies work, how the business works, and truth be told, I was pretty disgusted by everything by that time.
When I sat down with all the songs before recording, I realised I’d written a few songs specifically about places in America – there was this song about Detroit and another about Yellowstone National Park. My dad is actually American, so I wrote another song about that side of my family.
Salman liked my song ‘Humko Pyaar Hua’ from ‘Ready’ and asked me to try a romantic number for ‘Dabangg 2.’ After the recording, both Salman and Arbaaz Khan liked the way I sang the number and finalized my rendition for the film.
Waylon Jennings and I had a lot of fun recording together.
At 13, I loved how so many of my peers sang and played acoustic guitar, so I started recording videos with covers of famous songs and posting them online.
People wanted to know where I was and what I was doing. Was I still recording? Was I touring? Was I putting a band together? Was I writing songs? Was I even still singing?
Any aspect of life can help you be a better actor because what are we doing except living life while somebody’s recording it?
Back in the day, fans wrote letters to groups – you’d get them, although it could take a while. Now, artists can go online and there’s discussions about what you should and shouldn’t be doing. The minute you announce that you’re recording an album, thousands of people are telling you what that album should be.
While I was recording ‘Ziltoid,’ the movie ‘Mars Attacks‘ came on TV, I think, six times in one week. So I don’t know if there’s any direct references or anything, but the aesthetics of that movie was definitely around while I was creating the music, so I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t part of it.
Still for fun, I play the drums, but I don’t do much recording with them.
I enjoy recording and performing, but it’s the songwriting that I love most.
I think it was, my parents got me a karaoke machine when I was about 9 years old. Even before that, they got me a tape recorder that I used to walk around my life with. And there was something about recording and then hearing myself back.
I hope someone thinks I sing good. I’m always working hard to sing better. I sound the way I sound, but I can always be better. I work hard at singing and being a better recording artist.
My practice is to take a sheet, write the song number in the left side, name of the production, and time of recording. Only when I have to fill the name of the singer do we look out to see who is free. When the singers we want aren’t there, I end up singing it! That’s how I became a singer.
I always feel like there’s something magic in recording studios. There’s a reason good music continues to be made in them. It’s just some mojo element.
I’ve got a studio at home, and I’m always recording.
I’ve never been ambitious about recording.
Sheet music, recording, radio, television, cassettes, CD burners, and file sharing have all invalidated, to some extent, the old model of making a living making music.
It’s been over 15 years since I toured… over 12 years since I did any recording under my own name. I never really intended to take that long of a hiatus.
So I did a program with the Recording Academy, the Grammy Museum. So pretty much they take, like, one hundred kids during the summer and for a week or two every day they go over something different in music history. Then during the music history part of the program, they would just tell us about the different eras.
Art is basically communication, and I think everyone who’s a music lover has had that experience where a record or a recording has kept you company when no one else is around. And I think that is what I’m hoping that people get out of my music.
I never stopped recording, but I went through a period where… The one thing that a lot of people don’t know is that for as long as I’ve been as artist, I’ve been a writer and a producer.
I hadn’t been a recording artist all that long when albums came on the scene, and I was one of the first singers to point the way to how varied an album’s contents could be.
For some artists the live performance is the chicken before the egg of writing or recording of repertoire. For other artists the writing or recording of repertoire is the chicken before the egg of live performance.
When I was recording ‘Kun-Faaya-Kun,’ I did it like I was offering Namaaz.
When you’re recording to analog tape, it captures performance and you can’t necessarily manipulate that in different ways. It is what it is.
Even on our days off, we’re basically at the studio recording.
I think when we were making the first album, we were like 16, 17 years old, and I think just years and years of recording and playing shows – I know me, personally, I kind of figured out my style more and vocally learned a better way to sing in the studio.
In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.
Why I got into music was James Taylor, so to see him be a real down-to-earth guy that’s unbelievably talented… then to hear him sing those lyrics of ‘What I’m Thankful For,’ which is a song Ms. Yearwood and I got to write together, that was definitely a highlight of my recording life.
I feel that performing is its own art form, and recording is its own art form, and writing is its own art form, and that they all can happen simultaneously but at different paces.
My relationship with Music Row has always been, from my end, optimistic and hopeful that there is more than one way to approach the writing, recording, and marketing of an album.
No one is making extraordinary things alone. They might be alone in their bedroom while they’re recording or writing, but they didn’t actually conjure that thing out of nothing – without influence – without assistance – without anything.
I’m very conscious of the fact that I devoted my life to recording music, recordings and writing songs.
Long before the arrival of reality TV – before speed cameras, before recording angels on buses and lampposts – I felt I was living in a country that already knew how to watch itself. It was journalism that held the responsibility for seeing who we were and noticing what we did.
I was just writing songs in my spare time, and recording because it’s fun to do, and Sub Pop called me and said they wanted to put some stuff out. I had to weigh whether I wanted to put the time into it because it’s a commitment. But, in the end, it seemed too good to pass up.
The same way you can see me sit at a table in a movie and be six different people, the mother and the uncle and all these different things, when I’m in the studio, I can do that, too. I’m not trying to be a recording artist and have a certain type of music for the radio.
After moving to England I did some recording and eventually formed an English band, this was together for quite a few years with only a keyboard replacement. The band had no name, just my name.
When I was young, I was offered my first recording contract in 1971 and was offered quite a bit of money if I would change my character and be a ’70s version of Cher.
I think, actually, I was the first person to ever sign a simultaneous video and recording deal with a record company.
After discovering the Ramones, I discovered really crude ways to multi-track by taking another cassette recorder and plugging that into the eight-track, playing it back, so that as I was recording with the mic in my guitar, I could have another cassette player I had recorded on feeding into the recording.
Sometimes when you have multimedia, people use it too much. It has to be a tool and not the end product, if you can use it as a tool. The same thing apples when you are recording. We had this problem in the 80’s, we got so computerized there was no heart and soul in the music anymore.
I never thought I would be recording on any professional level, so to be doing a rockabilly, Motown, pop soundtrack in a L.A. studio was completely bizarre and amazing.
The group-effort sound in recording of ‘Sea Lion’ is like, you really hear all the people in the room and hear them interlocking. There’s a real freight-train energy of all these people at the same time playing.
The way I do it is there’s never recording ‘sessions.’ One finishes, the next one starts. It’s just continuous.
I think people, just because of digital recording and how computers have become such an important part of our lives, I think the means to record music now is in more people‘s hands. It’s a lot cheaper than it used to be.
A short story collection can be as exciting as a novel. It is a real complete experience, like when you listen to a real good recording, a Beatles record, and there are so many good songs.
I’m one of those pianists who tends to ignore every existing recording and lots of traditions about playing pieces when I start.
I need quiet when I’m recording because I don’t want any noise in the background.
When we were making Speaking in Tongues and Remain in Light, we were jamming. From that we were taking the best bits and then recording and improvising on top of those.
I started writing out all of my feelings, and people asked me, ‘Have you ever thought of recording your music?’ It was something I’d always thought of, but I’d never really had the confidence.
I have always thought of myself as a performer first and way down the line as a recording artist.
The lyrics are always the last thing I do. I always have a recording of basic tracks and maybe some of the lead work. I’ll sit back and listen to it, and I’ll just concentrate on what kind of feeling it gives me. My goal writing the lyrics is to not disrupt that feeling.
Back 20 years ago, I was recording with Bruce Springsteen, and his producer called me and said I had to be in the studio the next day to finish the sessions, and I couldn’t. I had to be in court, in California. All this took like 10 years out of my life.
By the age of 17, for me, we had got an recording contract, and, boom, I was gone.
Well, I’ve been recording myself on a computer since I was about 13 or 14. So it’s completely entwined with my creative process. Essentially, it allows you to make music that’s better and smarter than you are, by using your ears to lead the way.
Soundgarden signing to a major, then Mother Love Bone, and seeing the same happen to Alice in Chains. We were all suddenly making music and recording at the same time, and we had money to do it. It wasn’t like a $2,000 recording that you do over a weekend. It’s like, ‘Wow, maybe this will be our job.’
I love recording music.
Dre’s from Compton, I’m from Brooklyn, and we both wanted to make a better life for ourselves, right? And we both – somehow, we’re both recording engineers, that’s how we got our break.
As a young girl, I loved having stories read to me. There is something magical about narration and voiceovers. Recording a voiceover is an art form in itself.
I am opposed to the laying down of rules or conditions to be observed in the construction of bridges lest the progress of improvement tomorrow might be embarrassed or shackled by recording or registering as law the prejudices or errors of today.
I just stroll in right before the recording goes on.
I always have trouble recording drums and double bass.
I began both auditioning with Pearl Jam and recording for Eleven. In the fall of 1994, I joined Pearl Jam.
On the first recording, I wasn’t singing out that much; I was shy with my singing.
I’ve written a song for Prince. I never showed it to Prince, but just to see if I could do it. At the time, when I sort of knew him, he was recording a song a day. I wondered if I could do that. So I wrote it.
I’m never tired of going to the studio. I enjoy recording and documenting everything and trying new things.
I’m a perfectionist to a default. I will drive you crazy sometimes. When I’m recording, I will try something a trillion times to get it right.
Once you establish a foundation of knowing what the greatest recording artists of all time were… Wouldn’t you want your kids to know this stuff?
I just fell into the Dylanesque idea of recording. He is real fast.
Recording ‘Ten,’ we probably did ‘Even Flow‘ 30 times.
I’ve always wanted to be on an original cast recording. I grew up listening to them, and now to know that my voice is heard on three or four of them is just surreal. I never thought I would be that person.
I was in Australia in about 1996 when I played some acoustic guitar for some guys at a studio down there. They were pretty happy with it, and mentioned doing an album, so about a year later I met some people who were interested in recording.
You have to focus hard on recording songs that you believe in.
The friendship I had with Elvis began to take shape in 1968 when I was recording in Memphis. I’d record during the day, and Elvis would send one of his guys over to bring me to Graceland at night. Everything you’ve heard about Graceland during Elvis’s glory days is true and then some.
I started out in a professional choir at 13 years old. We traveled to different places, and I had a close relationship with the leaders of our choir. We were recording when I was 15, so it wasn’t like I had to wait until 25 to find out certain things.
In 2006 or something, I was recording the voices for this short, ‘The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti.’ I was having fun doing these really crappy Doc Brown and Marty McFly impressions. During the middle of a line, a burp came out naturally. It was just so funny and gross.
Recording a Hindi song takes me around 40 minutes whereas a Kannada song takes me about two hours. The music isn’t a problem, since the notes used are universal. The language is the problem. I try my best to get it right, as I’m sensitive about respecting every language, since all of them are sacred in my heart.
Somehow, magically, I’ve become an electronic musician, and I have a recording studio that looks like the bridge of the Enterprise.
You can see how different artists work, from writing to recording, just from being in the studio environment with them.
Recording is more autobiographical than acting. It’s me – either how I’m feeling then or once felt at some point in my life. It’s all me.
I’m a binge writer. I work in the music business fulltime, in artist management and developing songwriters and recording artists, and so juggling my job I carve out as much time as I can on the weekends.
You don’t know how many celebrities I’ve gone into recording sessions with who first are kind of weirded out by us freaky voiceover people, then when the day is over, they want to stay. They haven’t had that much fun acting in ages. It’s hard to have any attitude about it.
Bob Rock taught me a lot. His friendship has taught me a lot about what you should expect from a recording session and, more importantly, how you shouldn’t expect anything less than absolute joyousness. You should feel great. You should feel 14 to be doing it. It’s true and it’s rare.
I love Monk‘s song, ‘Just a Gigolo.’ It’s probably a minor song for him, but whenever I hear a recording of him playing it, I’m mesmerized because Monk clearly loved pop music. He took it very seriously and made an amazing thing out of it.
I’m not a slave to the recording industry. I have the freedom to make an album that I want to make and do it the way I want.
Since I’m known for recording other artists’ material, I’m absolutely deluged with mail from all the publishing companies. They take all the songs that’ve been lying around the office for months and throw them at me. Most of them are terrible, but you have to listen… just in case.
I can’t get that live and I don’t have the time to take the tape, after I’ve finished recording it, into a little studio somewhere else where I can get a different kind of percussion sound.
I don’t have smart speakers in the house because I have a thing about whether they are recording our conversations.
The joy about the recording is that you are your own boss. You don’t have a director telling you how to do it.
A lot of people think that I grew up in recording studios and knew the whole process, but that was never the case.
I just want to make that my life: recording music and trying to write a good song every day.
Honestly, recording with Faith Evans blew me away.
The actual work of recording a record or making a film just requires that you consciously block the time out to do that and nothing else. That’s what I do.
I really just like making music. People call that ‘work.’ Like, ‘Oh, you’re going to the studio to work?’ No, that’s even what I do in my off day. I love recording.
There’s the soundtrack to The French Connection II’I think It’s my favorite soundtrack. It hasn’t been released. I actually had to go and get the film and just make a recording of it to get the music.
I’ve been recording since 1993. It was a hobby for six of those years. In 1999, I decided to do it full time and take it seriously.
When I had my daughter, Louisanna, two and a half years ago, I started recording every funny or sweet thing she said or did on my phone.
Our healthcare system has seen some of the greatest achievements of the human intellect since we started recording history: We’re developing incredible devices and implantables to improve the quantity and quality of people’s lives.
Sound preservation is not only the history of our culture and our country but also a document of life in the world. There is something with sound that is so extraordinary that it can be preserved, that we can listen to a recording made in 1925 and be transported back to that time.
HBO was a big thing for stand-up, and when you’re a broke kid with absolutely nothing to do on the weekend, there was always video recording your HBO specials. I would just rewind those specials and watch them like they were new again.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s career is kind of how I want to create my career. He’s very involved with his recording and production company and also worked on some really great projects.
People ask me all the time which I would prefer doing more, but I honestly can’t say. When I’m filming, I’m like, ‘No, this is my favorite,’ and when I’m writing music and recording and performing, it’s like, ‘This is definitely it.’
When you’re on the road, you’ve got to have your four-track – or some kind of recording device to jam on and have a good time.
I began my career as a recording artist, and eventually I started directing my own music videos.
I’m very attached to Paris because I have a base there and am also recording there, but New York is home to me when I’m in the U.S., because it’s nice to have a bed to go back to.
With technology being the way that it is right now with Pro Tools and all that other stuff, more and more people are recording stuff at home and just utilizing Youtube and Facebook.
In recording, you’re trying to make something work sonically – getting the right inflection on the right guitar sound – and maybe a part that would be musically great doesn’t sound as cool.
