Les Baxter Quotes

You can do a lot to shape the feeling of a song by the way you record it.

On our first record, man, I didn't know what I was doing. I was just playing. I was over playing. You're as green as you can be with no experience in recording or knowing how sometimes a song can work: when it's too much, when it's not enough, when it's not right.

I know all my different formulas to get certain sounds. I've been doing this so long that I don't experiment anymore. Or let me rephrase: I've been doing this so long that I don't have to experiment as much. You always want to evolve and change, but if I go in and I know it's a certain type of song, I know exactly where I'm going to place the mics.

I spend time editing and massaging each note. Then I start layering with different instruments, adding harmonies, counterpoint, and whatever the song calls for. Then I arrange it into a whole piece, and decide where I need to add live musicians. It takes a lot of time, but it is very satisfying once it is complete.

I don't like to overcook songs.

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

Some tracks are with quartet and some tracks are with synthesizer.

I think it's his perception of knowing how to make a record build, keeping the integrity of the song in the music and really adding a lot of musical elements to compliment my voice and to compliment the song.

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 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.

The first rule of rock and roll is it's all about live. Then you have to learn a second craft, which is making records. It should go in that order.

Darrell is really good in the studio. I mean, he has a real working knowledge of how the process works, and what sounds good coming back over tape, and how the stuff works together.

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.

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.

But I would lie on the floor and analyze everything. I'd listen to all the strings and the background vocals on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and try to pick out the different instruments.

My idea is to play with the people who you know want to get it right. Then it's fun and easy to record, and you can get down to details, like taking out cymbals so the verse doesn't dwarf the chorus, something like that.

I love making music. I love being involved in arranging music. It's very natural to know what I want to hear next and come up with ideas that are variations of what might be good.

I like to explore a lot of textural, arrangement aspects in the studio.

I don't think we'll ever use the same sound techniques.

When I started out, even though you had your rhythm section, they were big horn sections, strings, live people laying on every part of the floor in the studio waiting for their chance to get on that one little track.

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.

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. I don't only listen to the guitar player.

After discovering the Ramones, I discovered really crude ways to multi-track by taking another cassette recorder and plugging that into the eight-track, playing it back, so that as I was recording with the mic in my guitar, I could have another cassette player I had recorded on feeding into the recording.

A lot of times, when you record something, the album becomes less about the music and more technical.

To make a genuine record, it takes more than a cool beat and some auto tune.