Devendra Banhart Quotes

I've built an 8-track studio in my house that's virtually identical to what they used at Abbey Road, and I also own the 16-track set-up that Led Zeppelin used to record 'Houses of the Holy.' I'm interested in producing, but I'm mostly recording my own stuff.

The Beatles production is often so 'perfect' that it sounds computerized. 'Sgt. Pepper' really does sound like it took four months to make.

I've never been one to think it was cheating to sample this or to loop the drum part there - I've always done that. Even using four-track cassette recorders, I was always doing whatever I could to make it as good as I could.

I loved the idea of recording. The idea of sound-on-sound-recording captured me as a young kid, and once I realized what it was I had an epiphany. Before I was even playing the guitar, I would create these lists of how I would record things and overdub them, like Led Zeppelin song, 'I could put this guitar on this track...' and so on.

When we recorded our first album sixteen track machines were the thing.

I used to think that all great recordings happened at about 3 A.M.

Sometimes when I do an overdub solo, they'll keep four or five of my attempts and then mix the bits that they like to make a solo up out of them. It's not against the rules, really - I can learn my own solos, then. But that's the whole beauty of multi-track recording, isn't it?

When I first started recording music, I was actually singing about microphones, equipment, recording.

I had to learn how to work in a studio at first because it's a totally different creative environment to the 'bedroom recordings' I'd done before, where I could translate my own ideas without having to explain them to anyone.

When you use some of the more modern recording devices and Pro Tools, when you get into the technology, you are aching to get into some territory.

Once I get the track I know what to do with it.

The studio is my main compositional tool. And I used to be horrible in the studio. I didn't know any kind of technical stuff. But when you have something in your head, you've gotta figure out a way of executing it.

I want to work with producers who are unique and have a different sound.

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

An album is a whole universe, and the recording studio is a three-dimensional kind of art space that I can fill with sound. Just as the album art and videos are ways of adding more dimensions to the words and music. I like to be involved in all of it because it's all of a piece.

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.

By the mid-'60s, recorded music was much more like painting than it was like traditional music. When you went into the studio, you could put a sound down, then you could squeeze it around, spread it all around the canvas.

What producers did was mostly recording in the studio, so it never changed our sound just that much.

I get very deep into the writing and recording process.

I have a rough idea when I walk into a studio though.

I needed an opportunity to get back in the studio and get my recording chops back together.

When I started in '54, it was only one track on a quarter-inch machine. We didn't have recording studios much around the country; we went into the radio stations and recorded our records.

I'm still amazed by the process of recording.

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

To make a rock'n'roll record, technology is the least important thing.