Due to my work as a musician, songwriter, recording artist and author, hundreds of people stream in and out of my basement studio to help me with my creative projects.
I’ve always loved music and loved recording.
Next time we need to be on drugs and have lots of suffering and alcohol abuse going on while recording, I’m kinda picturing a Jerry Lee Lewis session from the mid Seventies.
I was working at a non-profit for five years. But I could always create music after work. All throughout those years, I was writing songs and recording music and performing around town.
We want people to see us live before we continue on and call ourselves recording artists.
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.
I made many studio albums and I think the danger of studio recording is that if you do not watch out, you come out with a perfectly sterile performance.
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.
I have always loved music and singing, and I am open to listen to any type of music. Regardless of my mood, my heart is always set racing when I listen to opera. When I decide which music I want to hear, my choice is almost invariably an opera recording.
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.
I’m not just a singer of funny songs; I am basically, first and foremost, a musician. I’m always recording all styles of music.
I don’t keep a diary or a journal. Sometimes I’ll send emails to friends, and that’s a way of recording what I was thinking at any given time. But I’ve never been a journal keeper.
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.
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.
Recorded engine sounds, however, are a deliberate deception. They’re like going to a concert and listening to a recording. On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind buying a BMW recording and installing it in my ’96 Jeep Cherokee.
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.
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.
We were the best of friends. We monkeyed around recording sketches and jingles in George’s bedroom. On November 5, 1979, I phoned George and said ‘It’s now or never.’ Then we formed our first band.
The Hadley Street Dream is a tribute to making a vision come to life. My father built a compound on a dessert city block, he saw something in that space we couldn’t see. It was years later the album was born right there on Hadley St. He built the studio I started recording the album at.
When I first started recording music, we would record in the closet with socks on the mic.
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.
When you’re a little kid, you have nerve. I’d walk right up to whoever was recording and say, ‘Hey, dude, what’s the lick of the week?’
I’m recording an album. It’s sort of techno mixed with garbage – you, know, intense in-your-face music.
It’s a funny thing having a recording be part of your career. It means you can go back and revisit yourself, in a way most people don’t.
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.
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.
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.
It is important to know that what I do is not artistic. I am just a film-maker. I live how I live and I do what I do, which is recording moments of my life as I move ahead. And I do it because I am compelled to. Necessity, not artistry, is the true line you can follow in my life and work.
We listened to a lot of Rolling Stones and Beatles records when we were recording. They were really good at not playing loud, but generating really big sounds out of everything.
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.
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.
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.
Being able to walk out of the studio after a week of intense recording and jump into a cold sea and sit in a hot spring and soak for a few hours completely resets the whole system. Really refreshing. For me, it’s all about stepping out of the ordinary. Even psychically.
I suspect Obama did not know he was recording Angela Merkel’s cell phones.
I almost never set out to photograph a landscape, nor do I think of my camera as a means of recording a mountain or an animal unless I absolutely need a ‘record shot’. My first thought is always of light.
I want a hit. I don’t think anybody spends 12 months writing and recording an album, making something cool, and says, ‘Great, I hope this doesn’t sell.’ I don’t understand that mind-set. I want hits: a big bunch of them.
Today, with a recording, he can hear the thing enough times until he really gets acquainted with the language, and then he can begin to make an estimate of the intrinsic, aesthetic value of that piece of music.
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 studied all kinds of dance, all types of music. I got good grades. I started hitting the recording studio around 13.
I’m always in that mode – whenever I have a little free time, I’m always recording songs, writing, whatever I gotta do. It’s like my job is my vacation.
I like being in a recording studio. I like watching a song go from the simplicity of the original music.
This ‘Pighammer’ record is supposed to be a side project. And it just so happens that at the same time I’m recording this record, our contract was up with Warner Bros., so it’s time for Static-X to re-sign.
I have a little basement studio set up here at my house, and I do probably 80 percent of the recording here on my own. With multi-tracking technology, I can play various parts on top of one another.
Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!
I’m not a fan of watching myself on TV – it’s just not relaxing. It’s like if you hear your voice on a recording: it doesn’t sound the same as when it comes out of your mouth.
I dunno – it’s like, again, Juice was super big for me in terms of inspiration, and I learned a lot from him in terms of his recording process and stuff like that.
I always thought that I would have a recording career.
I’m very proud of my records, but my most natural creative tendencies have been in live performing. There’s a beautiful element to recording and making records, but I’ve always felt a little shy with it.
When you’re recording a ninth studio album, you can’t fail. You don’t really have any fears. You just make the best record that you like. You hope your fans are gonna like it, but if they don’t, they have eight other ones to listen to.
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.
Adaptability is crucial to working on Glee because every day is adapting to something. Because we’re doing a different genre of music, doing a different type of scene with a different scene partner, recording and dance rehearsals… no day is like another.
I hate recording all the shows for the week in one day, because I want to be able to mention current events and pop culture. If Madonna punches Britney in the face today, I want to reference that on ‘Wine Library TV’ tomorrow. Monday’s episode is always the best, because it’s hot off the press.
