Chico Hamilton Quotes

If you're using live bass versus orchestral bass, you've got to make sure that you're not stepping on the toes of the other elements, so you've got to balance it out.

The sound was my greatest concern. There were certain difficulties getting used to the way every musician can hear his or herself, the way each of them relates to the musician in the next seat.

The more guitars we have onstage the better, as I'm concerned.

In recording, you're trying to make something work sonically - getting the right inflection on the right guitar sound - and maybe a part that would be musically great doesn't sound as cool.

With American orchestras, in particular, because they play in such huge halls, getting a true pianissimo is very hard.

The darned thing about mandolins is they're really hard to turn up as loud as you would need to be to play with a drum set. They cease to sound like mandolins.

The absence of a bass player always makes things go faster and hit harder in the high-end range.

If all the elements are in place, you should get 80 percent of what a song has to offer no matter how you hear it, whether on headphones or on the radio.

You know, the ukulele itself is not a very loud instrument, all right? And, you know, compared to like a trumpet, right? A trumpet is really loud.

If you have a great-sounding guitar that's a quality instrument and a good amp, and you know how to make the guitar talk, that's the key. It starts with the guitar and knowing what it should sound and feel like.

I've got time, I hope, to make lots of quiet records. So quiet you won't be able to hear them.

I'm not really a knob-twiddler. I always work with an engineer; I'm not super hands-on when it comes to mixing boards and computers. I'm much more about what I'm hearing and what it needs to be like. I deal with songs and ideas and instruments.

Music as background to me becomes like a mosquito, an insect. In the studio we have big speakers, and to me that's the way music should be listened to. When I listen to music, I want to just listen to music.

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.

When you're onstage with an electric band going through a massive P.A. system, it's very artificial. You can't really hear your own voice as it comes out of your mouth.

The heavy guitars are the ones that sound good. They are not that comfortable, but they do sound great.

We actually added an extra electric guitar to beef up 'Need You Now', but we haven't changed any of this 'Own The Night' record at all for the international releases.

All you have to know is mathematically how many times to scratch it and when to let it go - when certain things will enhance the record you're listening to.

Usually bands with violins - it's this little, poorly amplified looking kind of futile on stage, and that's not the way that my music is put together.

I also mixed David Bowie's Young Americans album in 5.1 earlier this year and it will be available very soon. Even the original stereo mixes have been re-mastered and sound amazingly good, better than ever, in fact!

I play loud onstage for my own benefit as I like. But I'm not too fond of the P.A. either.

With bass, especially bottom end, the vibration has to happen on stage otherwise the feel is wrong. This is why you can't scale the equipment down too far.

A lot of modern amps and preamps sound great when you're jamming by yourself, but don't hold up in a band situation. The sound isn't dense enough, and the lows and highs tend to get soaked up by the bass and cymbals.

If you're playing in a room that holds 15,000 people, it's just a question of how bad the room acoustics are and in what way they're bad.

'Deacon Blues' was special for me. It's the only time I remember mixing a record all day and, when the mix was done, feeling like I wanted to hear it over and over again. It was the comprehensive sound of the thing: the song itself, its character, the way the instruments sounded, and the way Tom Scott's tight horn arrangement fit in.