Matt Skiba Quotes

Since I was doing all of it myself, I had to decide where I wanted to go with the songs, how to proceed with the chords, if the sound was alright, and all that detail on my own.

Analog, electronic, whatever it happens to be, I simply love and adore literally every aspect of making music.

Songs are not on a conveyor belt. I'm not chopping them up and putting them out.

I write the songs, go in and record them, then I listen to everything and decide how it all fits together.

The records I make, I'm there from the writing of the first note through the click tracks to the miking of the drums to the editing of everything to the production to the vocals to the artwork.

My best capacity is to edit. If anything, I am a specialist at editing: my usual approach is to record a song very long. In the beginning just jam, jam on and on. Then break the song and play with it.

When you make a record, you get to live in an imaginary world where you have the best kind of band on every song.

When I produce a record, I roll up my sleeves; I'm not one of those passive guys. I really get in there and make sure every note is measured. I tell the bass player, 'You have to play it like this,' or I tell the drummer, 'It's got to be like this.'

When I was recording from '70 to '82, I always played piano and laid the tracks down. But I used to talk to the other musicians while the track was playing.

When you produce an album, you're dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it.

It's a massive undertaking putting an album together... It's not light weight at all.

I'm interested in creating a little sound world for songs, really crafting it, building it, and making it like a little doll's house with little things inside it, staircases and rooms and everything kind of relates to everything else. I've never seen it as drums, bass, guitar and vocals in very separate spaces.

I had 25 or 30 songs. Sequencing the record, I left that to the producer. I'm not into doing that stuff.

I sit and write songs alone and then get together with people to help me flesh it out into a recording.

I pay such close attention of the record making process that most people would assume are very little and wouldn't be that big of a deal; the packaging, the title, and the harmonies, I think, are arguably as important as the lead vocals.

But really important, perhaps most important is the craft; how you make your record, the creation of these sonic worlds you want your listener to hear.

I felt that the studio recording process makes you stand still too long.

I started trying to do my own music at home, and I was like, 'You know what, I can play the guitar, sort of. And I can do these things, sort of. And I can make these crazy noises on my computer, sort of. But I need a ridiculously good drummer. I need someone to help me with string arrangements.'

I want to make an album with just great beats and big vocals and just amazing lyrics.

Usually, when you go in to make a record, you have 30 songs, and you record 30 of them, and 12 of them make it to the record.

We'll set up a demo session and try to knock out eight or ten songs and make them sound as close as we can to a record with the money and time we have.

When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble.

Writing the songs and producing the songs and arranging them and recording them is your canvas and your palette and your brush.

I'm working on my music - I've taken a little break from it and want to get back into that.

I wrote 'Despacito' with my guitar, but where you can tweak a lot is in the production.