But I started it when I was going through a transitional time in my life. At the end of it, it really sort of symbolized it. I had made room to change, and room to grow. I recorded it in a little room.
I just do a random roulette wheel version of what I’ve recorded or sometimes tunes I haven’t recorded. It’s a collection of whatever happens, happens.
Another thing to do with the blues is how they were recorded. They were done on the quick, and some of that stuff was made on wire, not even tape, let alone digital.
‘TTM’ started off being a feature. A producer wanted me to just hop on the beat, like a Diplo type of thing. When I recorded the song, I liked it a lot, and I figured, instead of them paying me to do this, I’d rather just use this for my project, and we can just get money together.
I like the old days when, if I wrote a song and I recorded it, it didn’t mean somebody else couldn’t record it.
I’ll always regret how I recorded ‘Burgundy’ ’cause it’s not how I felt. The words that were coming out of my mouth and how I mean them, it’s so much different.
I love to sing, and I’ve recorded a few covers and originals with friends, but I haven’t written any songs.
When I talk about what I’m feeling, I can get outside of it and analyze it. I think that process, especially on ‘Sprained Ankle,’ happened after it was recorded. All of those songs are just documentations of how I felt at that time. I was writing them because I needed to.
I still have my first paycheck. It was just, I think, a dollar or two that I got when I started as a songwriter with BMI, and I had some songs there that I had through the company, and in the mail I got this big old check for, like, a dollar and a half or something. Somebody had recorded one of my songs.
I had recorded a song ‘If You Need Me’ for the Correc-Tone label, but it was a small label and distribution was a problem.
I was obsessed with films as a kid and so recorded as many as I could. I spent all my pocket money and any money earned by doing extra chores on blank videos for my burgeoning cinema.
I could have recorded music and hoarded it all because it’s not good enough for me. Also, with dropping music, fans get what they want, and you get to learn from them and whatever you put out.
I think there’s an attitude these days that you can go straight from a studio to the stage, and it isn’t really like that. But playing live was the most important thing for me at the start because whenever I recorded something, it didn’t sound right; I didn’t like how my voice sounded. It was just raw.
I’ve recorded lots of projects, but just haven’t bothered to release them.
I’d experimented with so many different types of music. I had these folky songs I’d written and recorded, but something wasn’t quite right.
I wrote a song a good long while ago, ‘I Ain’t Livin’ Long Like This,’ that has been around and been recorded by a lot of people, but it was basically childhood memory.
When we recorded ‘Iowa,’ we jammed, we went through the songs, we played as a band and we recorded as a band.
So, in the course of events, I had an opportunity to come in contact with Colin Matthews, through the Rex Foundation sponsoring recordings of various music that was being recorded over there.
I missed my entrance in a production of ‘Blade to the Heat’ at Thick Description in San Francisco. I came into the scene very late and hugged the punching bag. I had no idea what to do! Unfortunately, that mishap was recorded for archives at UC Berkeley. It goes down in history.
I couldn’t have recorded this record 15 years ago. My voice didn’t have the depth to pull these songs off.
I recorded harp first or singing first. I recorded it all together. Part of the reason is that I don’t know how to play the songs without also singing. I forget how they progress. I don’t think that any of them are verse, chorus, verse, and so on. They are not simple.
How can we be free when we are prisoners to social media, in a world without privacy? How can we be free when our every movement is tracked and every conversation is recorded and can easily be held against us? How exactly are we free if we are tethered to our cell phones?
We won a contest at the teen fair in Vancouver and the first prize was a recording contract and we recorded at a radio station on the stairway, and we did a record and it got put out.
Most of my early records were not cohesive at all, just collections of demos recorded in different years. ‘Odelay’ was the first time I actually got to go in the studio and record a piece of music in a continuous linear fashion, although that was written over a year.
World Play is very ’70s arena rock, very raw and in your face, and that’s what we wanted. We recorded it in a very off-the-cuff manner and didn’t really plan out how we were going to play. My solos are first takes.
The country that I was coming from, the island I was in, hadn’t been written about, really. So I thought that I virtually had it all to myself, including the language that was spoken there, which was a French Creole, and a landscape that is not recorded, really, and the people.
I knew ‘Hurt’ way before Dad recorded it. In 1992, ‘Downward Spiral’ was one of my favorite albums.
This never happens, but I was writing with my friend Ryan Hurd and Eric Arjes, and we wrote this song called ‘Last Turn Home.’ The next day, my publisher emailed it to Tim McGraw’s label. He listened to it, and I think within the week, he went into the studio and recorded it. And that never happens.
The ‘I Wanna Dance’ hook actually came to me when I was in bed and just in that lucid moment between consciousness and sleep… I jumped out of bed and recorded a voice note of the vocal hook and I went into the studio the next day fully inspired.
We played all of the songs on the first Johnny Winter AND every day before we recorded them, so that when we got in the studio, it was totally easy, as we knew exactly what we wanted to do.
I was bartending when I recorded ‘Same Love,’ and when it was on the radio, too. I remember overhearing people talking about the song while I was making them drinks.
Well, Smoke n’ Mirrors has very much a world music flavor and it doesn’t park itself in one country. It borrows heavily from the Brazilian angle, which is dear to my heart, and I recorded several albums with that flavor.
I’ve always been one for show business. I like performing, and I used to get criticized for having production value. But now it’s all that! People need to get what they pay for! Otherwise, just listen to recorded music.
I’ve recorded 25 to 30 songs in a single night, singing five or six takes of each song. I’m very disciplined.
I recorded a song called, I Fall to Pieces, and I was in a car wreck. Now I’m worried because I have a brand-new record, and it’s called Crazy!
I’ve just built a studio in my mama’s old bedroom, which I thought was fitting; she died last year. We’ve recorded nine songs recorded in there already; we’re sort of just chipping away.
I play a little bit of everything. I beat on the walls. I whistle. I scream. I go outside and scream because it sounds cool when it’s recorded. I play drums on a chair. I snap, clap… just anything to build the track and make it feel like I want it to.
The living Church of the redeemed is his book. He founded a religion of the living spirit, not of a written code, like the Mosaic law. Yet his words and deeds are recorded by as honest and reliable witnesses as ever put pen to paper.
As soon as you pick up a guitar, you’re up against the legends of rock. The same goes with stadium drum kits and electric bass. Essentially, you’re already in a soundscape that’s very familiar and has a lot of established legendary material recorded using those instruments.
I recorded my first jazz record in the ’70s.
I recorded everywhere. I would go to different cities and do a session there for the project. I did sessions in New York and I did sessions in L.A. It was just kind of wherever I was and I felt like cutting a track.
I think probably the first time I recorded anything was mid-2010.
I was always a huge fan of E. E. Cummings. He did a series of lectures at Harvard or Princeton, and they were recorded. And they were incredibly moving.
Sinatra was bothered with issues of anti-Semitism and racism all his life. The song and film he made ‘The House I Live In,’ was a deep message against prejudice and he was very proud to have recorded the song.
Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence.
The record company started as an adjunct to that, to give young composers their first recorded performances; to give young musicians their first debut on a recording. These are all things that big record companies would never touch because there is no money in it!
We recorded that trio and it’s out on the Knitting Factory label. I’ve got another record in the can with that group and Marc, which I’ll hopefully finish some time before next summer.
My first trip to Italy’s Tuscany region was in 1990 when my husband, Sting, recorded an album there.
On ‘Metallica,’ I recorded six or seven different guitar solos for almost every song, took the best aspects of each solo, mapped out a master solo and made a composite. Then I learned how to play the composite solo, tightened it up and replayed it for the final version.
