When I first started recording, I was told by all of the experts in the business that the kind of music that I was doing was never going to sell. That disco was the coming thing and it was going to take over and what I was interested in was a minor sideline.
My feet never touched the ground. Lots of good groups with crazy and unique images. It was wild. I spent all of my time doing gigs, TV appearances, interviews, or recording. I could write a book - and probably will.
After years of begging, I got my parents to get me a little Craig tape recorder, a reel to reel. Then I started recording voices, or recording Jonathan Winters off television and stuff like that.
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.
I really love filling out forms - quite fortuitous, really, given that as one of Australia's 4 million-ish disabled people, ticking boxes and recording my life for other people is what I've spent a fair chunk of my time doing.
At that time, I was signed to Columbia Records as an Independent Producer. I spent many weeks forming, auditioning, rehearsing and recording demos for Kenny, who was finally signed to Columbia Records.
When you're recording, if you're not really clean in your playing, it sounds like a mess.
A MIDI file contains coded instructions to play a particular series of notes on an electronic music synthesizer. A MIDI file is more like a piano roll in a player piano than any type of sound recording.
It's not the case of turning in a bunch of songs and recording the next month. I think you're looking for songs all year long and you're writing all year long.
Still for fun, I play the drums, but I don't do much recording with them.
When I started The Shins, it really was just me, alone, but it was still The Shins. I was totally recording stuff and writing songs as The Shins and all of that. So the beginning inception of the whole thing was some sort of a lie, I guess.
My intention when I came into this industry was to be a musician, not necessarily a recording artist, just a musician in general. And that's the reason I went to college and got my degree, which has been great for me. It's helped me a lot with my career.
When we were recording, sometimes I wondered if what we were doing would even be possible to play live.
Well, I just can't play the game anymore. I'm 63 years old, and I've been in the business for 40 years now. I take good advice and direction really well, but I don't need somebody that finished college two years ago to come in and tell me what I should be recording.
Orchestras are not used to playing the kind of stuff jazz musicians like to play. It requires a lot of rehearsal and recording time, so it's much easier to do on a synth or sampler. So, we came up with that idea.
I do like to be creative and I'm very lucky that I've been given different areas in which I'm able to do that - whether it be film or television or theatre or whatever. I'm also still into music and recording.
Most of the time I like to start an album abroad, not at home, just to avoid the pressure, to not wake up and think, 'OK, it's the first of recording this album.' I like to avoid that.
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.
I knew that it was my only shot to be taken seriously in the recording industry, because it's fast and broad.
I don't think a lot of bands and artists work as hard as we do on the creation, on the writing, the arrangements and the recording in our format.
But here I am today recording this and I'm in the studio with all the others on a clean mic. It's extraordinary, the actor's found a way of doing it for himself.
Classical musicians do this all the time. They want perfection. So they piece things together. Eight bars of this and six bars of that. Glenn Gould said that with a recording he wanted to make perfect versions of pieces.
I asked the producers when I was doing 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' if they could give me a VHS recording of the film that I could show to my family, because in Mexico and Latin America, when you do a film, you don't expect anybody to see it, especially not in the cinema.
I've not really spent much time in proper studios. The room itself where you're recording, and how you live while you're there is what appeals to me.
In the account book of the Great War the page recording the Russian losses has been ripped out. The figures are unknown. Five millions, or eight? We ourselves know not.
And, you know, I think the original recording of Ravel's Bolero, probably whoever played percussion on that, will never have It played better than that.
I was burned out. I think I was just exhausted. It was a very intense five years. We didn't stop. It was constant touring, constant writing, recording.
Recording 'Ten,' we probably did 'Even Flow' 30 times.
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.
I just stroll in right before the recording goes on.
You can alter movie singing so much because you go into the recording studio and, just technology for recording has gotten so good, you can hold out a note and they can combine a note from take 2 and a note from take 8.
I think when you're just counting on your voice, you actually need double the energy. I find myself acting out the scenes and being very physical while I'm recording because I think you can tell when someone is just sitting on a stool.
I began the process of recording myself seriously in the fall of 1999. If I could finish an album of my own music, I would. Five years later I am happy to say I have.
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.
I love L.A., but I don't live there. I spent some time there when I was recording 'Kaleidoscope,' mainly working with some of the artists I collaborated with. The city and people in L.A. have a great vibe and the weather is always beautiful.
Generally, the best recording is the original cast, because that's the way the piece grew: integrally, with them.
