Hilary Hahn Quotes

When I record something, I'll take a drive and just listen.

When you're playing in front of people, everything is external. It's all going from you out to an audience. When you're in a studio, it's very internalised, it's going from the air through you into this meticulously crafted, layered piece of work.

I always liked the intensity of the recording.

It's always important for us to record, so if we're not performing live, that's what we're doing.

When I was working with Talking Heads what would happen typically is that they would go out and start playing a track, and I would always run the tape. I always record everything, even a run through where you're trying to get in tune. That's a principle because sometimes when the situation isn't clear interesting things happen, and they are worth listening to again.

When you're making music, you don't look at what's going on in the studio next to you.

During the day I'll work on music. I have a sampler and a drum machine out with me and I write new songs while we're on the road.

I remember discovering that I loved recording - that breakthrough when I was in high school getting to record for the first time.

We spend more time on the road and when we cut an album, it'll take us as long as six months.

You get the beats. You write to them. You go in the studio and lay it down. Hopefully, a song comes out sounding good. If it comes out sounding good, you put it to the side with the rest of the other good ones, and you try to decide which ones you're gonna use on the album.

With 'Defenders,' we had some very barebones ideas, but the bulk of it came together very quickly over in Ibiza. The main thing I like about that record, looking back on it now, is the change in the texture of the production from 'Screaming For Vengeance.'

I started recording in my sophomore year in high school. I recorded things on my cell phone in my basement.

When I record, it's this very precious and insular thing.

I write on the acoustic guitar, I write some on the piano, but I've been messing around with these guitar pedals and drum machines, educating myself in that world.

I'd say writing songs is, for me, as much playing the tape recorder as it is playing guitar or writing words.

When I'm making a record, I'm trying to take people through different moods.

If I'm not on tour or doing a show, I'm in the studio.

To me, making a CD is like writing a book.

I've been a huge fan of Adele, Sam Smith, and Ed Sheeran, and those amazing artists draw inspiration from their present and past experiences; they write songs from their heart.

For me personally, I'm always writing from what's happening in my emotional life. Even without thinking about it a lot of the time, it comes out in the songs that I'm writing.

With me, I record so much that I just get in the zone.

I'd say 99 per cent of the time I write on my own, just with my guitar, and then it's trying to figure out what it needs in a production sense.

I still love to go in the studio and write and all that.

All day long you write little ideas on the piano and the guitar, but sometimes all you have to do is come in, set up the mic, press record and start the process.

To me, finding sounds, or even recording, is a compositional process. The studio is kind of an instrument.