The way I work on music is that I go into my studio, and I start playing music, and I see what happens, and… I never think about it.
You simply cannot do a sitcom by committee. It will not work. You’ve got to have one or two clean, creative voices in charge, and there’s got to be some faith by the studio and network in those people to make the right choices.
The fans are very, very loyal. They’re always saying, ‘When is the next album?’ They know when I finish in the studio it’s got to be a few years before the next album.
It’s nice because success has allowed me to have a blast on stage, to be in the studio with amazing people, but I find it all a bit bizarre.
Songs really are like a form of time travel because they really have moved forward in a bubble. Everyone who’s connected with it, the studio’s gone, the musicians are gone, and the only thing that’s left is this recording which was only about a three-minute period maybe 70 years ago.
I always wanted to be a full-time musician. Every television job I had was a means to buy a grand piano, or to put in a recording studio, or something like that.
I do have electric guitars, because I’ve always believed, especially when I’m working in the studio with other bands as producer, that there should be a really nice Strat around.
There’s something really nice about not sitting separate from the crew in some massive trailer away from the studio. To actually be there with them, it’s more of a creative process.
I stay in the studio. I’m a studio junkie.
I have ambitions to do a Broadway record one of these days and get in the studio with like, a real orchestra. I’m a big musical theatre geek.
The way we structure our deals is to work closely with the director. It is imperative to work with a studio because the way the film is marketed is crucial.
If I am writing a movie and I am stuck, I can call the studio and tell them it’s delayed. You can’t do that with television – you have air dates to meet.
I prefer playing in the studio because you have much more control over things.
The studio is just a labor. Getting on stage is the reward.
I met will.i.am in the studio and played him a couple of songs and he liked them. We’re similar but there’s nobody in my lane doing what I’m doing.
The recollection of how, when and where it all happened became vague as the lingering strains hung in the rafters of the studio. I wanted to shout back at it, Maybe I didn’t write you, but I found you.
I keep waiting for a paradigm shift to happen that will let network and studio execs see that sci-fi is the same as any other genre in terms of how you approach it – logically, character-based, with challenging ideas and forward thinking – but I worry that it might never happen in my lifetime.
Money’s never an issue. I can go and work for a small studio theatre somewhere if it’s a play I really care about, or do TV or a big commercial West End show.
Daffy, of course, wants to go on the journey with him but the studio decides they want Daffy back, so Bugs and a young studio executive heroine have to go out and try to bring him back.
When I left Van Halen, I went in the studio and made a CD called Marching to Mars with all studio musicians. I did it immediately. With the disappointment riding on my shoulders of the breakup of the band.
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 think it’s the most extraordinary studio around. I would love to do my next project with Pixar.
Exploitation films were famous for taking an issue an exploiting it because they could move much faster than a studio could. If there was any hot topic, they would run out and make a quick movie and make a buck on it, by changing it around and using it, in some way, to give some relevance.
I never saw myself so much as an actor. I wanted to be a cartoonist like Charles M. Schulz and create my own world and be able to have a studio at home and not commute and be able to be with my family.
The ‘All My Children’ studio was near Lincoln Center, and I used to see all the ballerinas and the dancers, and I thought, I don’t want to bulk up; I want to have long, lean, toned muscles. And I found out that through Pilates, you can achieve those strong, lean dancer muscles.
T Bone and I grew up together in Fort Worth, Texas. He had his own recording studio by the time he was seventeen years old. When we were both nineteen he made the first archival recording of my voice.
It’s hard to shape glass. It took me years of practice, and as a result, I’ve never gotten bored with it. It’s difficult. Every time I come into the studio, I’ve got some sort of new challenge. And something that I would like to learn how to do better, and the material never disappoints me.
‘Chronicle 2’ has become this question of, ‘How do we all make a movie that we all respect?’ And that’s true to what ‘Chronicle’ is. There’s no one at the studio who wants to make a bad movie. They all want to make a good movie just as much as I do.
A studio recording is perfection, but emotion and passion come only when you turn on the machine and go for the groove. If you do that with no mistakes, it sounds beautiful.
I don’t believe that an animation studio should be an executive-driven studio.
My experience is that there’s absolutely a correlation between the enthusiasm within an animation studio for a given character and the enthusiasm the audience feels when seeing the movie.
I’m very committed to and interested in CNN’s journalism and our magazines and our movie studio, not just HBO, where I grew up. But I do have a fondness for subscription television.
The real test of a musician is live performance. It’s one thing to spend a long time learning how to play well in the studio, but to do it in front of people is what keeps me coming back to touring.
In the studio, I don’t do a lot of work that requires repetitive activity. I spend a lot of time looking and thinking and then try to find the most efficient way to get what I want, whether it’s making a drawing or a sculpture, or casting plaster or whatever.
Viral don’t mean I’m outside wilding. I can go viral in the club or in the studio.
I produce some of my music videos on a $200 budget. But I produce most of my videos on zero budget. I have a studio in my apartment – which is actually just a green screen I have tacked on my wall and some lamps to light everything.
One does afford oneself the luxury to come into the studio and all day, every day, spend one’s life making aesthetic propositions. What an immense luxury.
I think that songwriting changed when groups started spending more time in the studio.
The most calmest place I can be is the studio. And like, I stay in there ’cause I know, when I come out, it’s back to reality. Man, if you’re angry all day, man, stay in the studio.
Some people are denizens of the studio. I’m more of a denizen of the live appearance. I love the live thing.
I knew that I could be more creative onstage, to state my own case and deliver my own interpretation of the role much more aggressively than in the recording studio.
The size of a studio film lets you see technology in a way that you wouldn’t on an independent film, like the gadgets and the angles and all that.
Normally, you go into the recording studio, make a record and then take it on the road and you think… wow… I could have done THIS to it, or something.
I watch my contemporaries, and they love to live in the studio and I don’t. I have a life. I treat it as a 9-to-5. I try to create something new every day, and then I get on with my life.
A lot of artists go in the studio and say, ‘OK, whaddaya want me to do? Is it gonna be a hit? I’ll do it. Is it gonna get played on the radio? I’ll do it.’ So they start makin’ these songs, and they fall in the same tempo, same category, same this, same that, and it’ll just all sound the same.
But when I record my next studio album, of course I’ll do the lead vocals.
I love working with different musicians in the studio, that’s a real joy working with someone for the first time.
Of course, it gave the studio an enormous power, because I don’t know any other place who had that skill with images to communicate with. And the need of these kinds of images are even greater now than they ever were because we are losing our life symbols.
Let me tell you something about Tunechi – about that boy. That boy comes to the studio every day and grind as if he doesn’t have a dollar in his pocket.
I had a really good time working with Jim Cameron. A lot of people didn’t, but I did as I got on with him really quite well. For a director who spends most of his time looking down a lens or in the digitisation studio or working out some graphics, he is actually very good with actors.
Which is why I felt I was truly blessed this year, with leads in two nice films, and also the luxury of being able to do a studio film and an independent afterwards was fantastic.
I now have a home recording studio, which I can operate entirely on my own, as well as a portable version of the same which allows me to record anywhere I like and simply swap out the hard drives for use in the home studio.
My favorite hobby is writing and recording songs at my studio. I like to surf, but I don’t get a chance to do that as much as I’d like. I don’t live close to the beach. I also like to ski, but I don’t get to do that much, either.
