Chris Rea Quotes

People are so into digital recording now they forgot how easy analog recording can be.

The number of times that anything is overdubbed on 'Frampton Comes Alive!'... the rule was, if it didn't make it to the tape, then we can redo it because it needs to be done. If it made it to the tape, and it sounds good, we leave it. So nothing was overdubbed on that album at all that wasn't absolutely necessary.

My dad used to do a lot of music when he was young, so he had an 8-track MiniDisc recorder, and when he realized that I was getting on with it, he brought it upstairs to my room and showed me how to record and how, once you finished eight tracks, you can cut it down to two and have another six tracks to play with.

When you're recording live, really good vintage instruments onto two-inch tape, it's the best fidelity you can get.

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.

My very first records, I was very interested in how you get the particular quality you want out of it, and I began to learn about the engineering and aspects of production and things very early on. I got hands-on with the process and taught myself how to engineer, as opposed to just being a producer who asked the engineer to make it sound nice.

The tracks on 'Sleep' were recorded live to 2-track. I did a fadeout or two of them, but that's really it.

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

My music sounds different because the techniques are archaic, seeing as most people only record digitally.

'Brace the Wave' is an acoustic-electric record recorded with electricity on analog-digital and digitally-analog equipment.

I just tend toward more lush, full sounds in my productions. I don't have any preference when it comes to analogue versus digital; I use what's best for the application. Analogue synthesis is nice, but it's just one tool among many, and it has its place.

Technology has allowed people to make records really cheap. You can make a record on a laptop.

I had this fascination with four-track recorders when I was in high school.

You can alter movie singing so much because you go into the recording studio and, just technology for recording has gotten so good, you can hold out a note and they can combine a note from take 2 and a note from take 8.

The late '70's and early '80s is the zenith of a certain craftsmanship in sound recording.

Our job as producers is to make the music sound as good as possible.

I've discovered that sheer quantity doesn't necessarily make for a heavier sound; if anything, overdubs make guitars sound mushier.

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

I prefer recording drums in the analog format, but that does not mean I would only do it that way.

I like working with modern sounds in the studio as much as I'm happy to work with a basic rock n' roll format.

For my second record I had gotten ProTools (program) and started to familiar myself with hard disc recording.

Some people record onto tape, and then they pay for the tape, and download those onto a hard drive. Initially in a Pro Tools program. Other people go straight into digital, and use no tape at all.

On record dates like that I never felt too nervous because everything was really overdubbed. When we did that album, we were in the studio for probably a week, so you had a lot of opportunity to fix things.

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.

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