Ry Cooder Quotes

No compression or as little as possible - that's how you get a good recording.

I like noise. It's always puzzled me why one of the goals of contemporary recording is to get rid of noise and to eliminate any element of a performance.

Early CDs, I found, flattened out the sound - it took away all the highs.

I don't like the compression on compact discs. It's lacking in air, and it's lacking in majesty.

When you hear a large symphony orchestra. for instance, in a concert hall, there's a big, sweeping sound that just doesn't get on to a record.

When you hear a great two-track of a performance in Carnegie Hall, let's say, it sounds like you're right there at that moment. It's true to reality. And the closer it gets, once it gets too technical, it becomes very tinny to hear notes. It doesn't sound right. It has to be natural.

That's one of the problems with the Zeppelin stuff. It sounds ridiculous on MP3. You can't hear what's there properly.

I just want people to hear the music the way it's suppose to sound, the way we meant for them to hear it. You sit in the studio all this time and make the music, tweak it, try to get it perfect. They should be able to hear it that way.

You shouldn't really have to use EQ in the studio if the instruments sound good. It should all be done with microphones and microphone placement.

Young people have decided they like to listen to music in a certain way, through ear buds, and that's fine with me as long as it doesn't bother them that they're not hearing 90 percent of the music that way.

On the song 'Step,' the chorus is Ezra is singing into my laptop with the laptop microphone, and you can hear the trains going by my apartment, but we liked the quality of that recording.

My dad got me the same mic I use on everything now - this $200 mic from Guitar Center.

The number of times that anything is overdubbed on 'Frampton Comes Alive!'... the rule was, if it didn't make it to the tape, then we can redo it because it needs to be done. If it made it to the tape, and it sounds good, we leave it. So nothing was overdubbed on that album at all that wasn't absolutely necessary.

The best records are not perfect. They don't sound digital or like someone applied rules.

We record a lot of our shows, we record our soundchecks.

As a musician, I have always strived for my albums and live performance to render a sound as close as possible to perfection.

A good microphone is an essential thing for a singer.

Sometimes I hear records that are being recorded at the absolute highest quality, and I just don't like the sound of it.

My studio was built with a team of experts to record the sitar at the highest level possible, and I'm very happy with the results.

When you're recording live, really good vintage instruments onto two-inch tape, it's the best fidelity you can get.

Getting into the voice-over booth, there are no cameras and no inhibitions.

It's about how you're using the space. That's what makes live music.

Radio or no radio, I just like the way records sound when the drums and vocals are loud.

I was born in the overdub years. I wish there wasn't such a thing as a multitrack tape player, because what you heard would be the record.

I like to record. It's very intense.