Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Quotes

I went to school for audio engineering, and I was around a lot of sound engineers over the summers in New York, so I'm pretty comfortable in engineering my own stuff.

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.

I've always been a bit of a sound freak in the movies I've done.

Today's recording techniques would have been regarded as science fiction forty years ago.

Every time we go into the studio and use a different engineer or producer I try to look, listen and learn their approach. That has helped with the gear I look for to use live and in the studio.

I am such a gearhead. In my recording studio, I personally engineer and edit everything on computers.

There is a lot of use of ProTools in professional studios, but this is mostly for the special effects it allows, not for sound quality. These special effects soon fall out of fashion, and I don't think this trend will define studios permanently.

It's big production. It's huge. It's using studio technology to your benefit. You don't go in and play live and then just take the tapes and get them mastered. You have to create.

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.

Pro Tools was invented to quicken the recording process.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story.

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.

We're so used to everything being properly manicured, like you can hear every footstep in a movie, you can hear every bit of dialogue, and everything is in its place.

The studio that we mix in is still in Chicago.

I think I have a basic sound aesthetic that is in most of what I do.

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.

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.

I'm really anti-option, so computers have been my nightmare with recording. I don't want endless tracks; I want less tracks. I want decisions to be made.

I just spend my life studying the manufacture of sound and picture and my education, if you like, has come from what I've chosen to make sounds and pictures on.

I try to listen to a lot of music when I'm in the mixing process of a record, when I'm in post-production and trying to get everything to sound a certain way.

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?

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

I don't believe that recordings should sound radically better than the artist, I think that's dishonest. For example, I'm not a great singer but if I spent enough time tweaking my vocals, I could sound like one. But I don't, what you hear is pretty much what I sing.

I know sound, and this is what I'm going to stick to: what I know.