Stephen Malkmus Quotes

The magic can happen in a studio. Special things can happen in a recording studio, even though it may seem like a clinical environment from the outside looking in.

I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't.

I've always been interested in what happens in the studio.

I realized I liked being in the studio and working on translating the ideas into recordings.

One of the most frustrating parts about songwriting for me is production, but it makes me want to get better at it and ends up being one of the most rewarding parts of it.

I've never forgotten a single record I cut or a song I wrote.

That's the thing I love the most - making records and creating new things. That's always the thing that grabbed me. Making records is the thing that I really love.

You can see how different artists work, from writing to recording, just from being in the studio environment with them.

I think, for me, a way to really come up with new ideas and come up with new ways of writing music is to create a unique sound palette or soundscape for all the films I'm working on.

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

Big Pop songs are born of inspiration and spontaneity. The question becomes how do you create spontaneity when you're going into the studio five days a week?

What really excites me is the production. I get in there and change a lot of stuff.

We've always tried to inspire ourselves, so to speak. In the beginning, that could mean just hearing your own songs played back to you for the very first time.

With our producer, Greg Fidelman, it was really a joy to work with him and to try different things and experiment.

It should take you 15 minutes to make a song, and then get out of there.

I worked on 'Cadillactica' with the mind to not sample as much and focus on creativity.

You can never really know what a record's going to be.

Making an album is always a puzzle: you start by seeing a lot of different pieces, and they all need to come together into one picture.

The studio experience fluctuates depending on who you work with, it's not like it's all one experience. Every studio is different, every producer's personality is different. You never know what you're going to do.

I like being in a recording studio. I like watching a song go from the simplicity of the original music.

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.

An album is a thing you take time out and go work on.

I love, love, love just being hands on at all times in the studio.

It's a weird thing when you make records. You try to hear it before you make it, so you walk into the studio with this idea of what you expect to happen, and that usually changes. That usually turns into something else, and that's a good thing.

I get very deep into the writing and recording process.