Stevie Jackson Quotes

I really don't think records should be made in the manner where you sit and write, and when you're finished writing, you start recording. That just seems conventional and old-fashioned to me.

Nobody sets out to make a bad record.

I get very deep into the writing and recording process.

I've always been interested in what happens in the studio.

I've always recorded the same way. I put down as many ideas as I have, then strip them away at the mixdown. It's better to have too much music than not enough.

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 realized I liked being in the studio and working on translating the ideas into recordings.

The band projects just took natural priority. I didn't really have a solo career, just wanted to share the music in another way and to learn more about writing, recording, etcetera.

Singing and playing live can be difficult. Like, in the studio, I would record either the music track first or the vocal first. I don't necessarily do them together.

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

We rarely write in the studio. Everything's already completely arranged before we go in. That way, we can really focus on getting the recording right.

I really write at home on my own, and the demos themselves are very similar to the final recordings in a lots of ways.

When you record an album in six days, you don't have time to work out a lot of stuff.

What happens with writing a song and demoing it, for me the demo always becomes the master.

The first songs I made brought me to the Grammys. I was a five-times nominated teenager off voice memos and songs that were clearly recorded off different mics.

Almost everything I've ever recorded, I recorded myself at the desk, in my house.

I've recorded at home since I was a teenager, and I'm able to sit here in my underwear and keep trying different things until something works. I think if I did that in a studio the engineer would be like, "What the hell is wrong with you?"

I think computers have changed things tremendously. At one time, you tended to take the rough with the smooth. But now, because you can go back and stop and start, and have a limitless amount of tracks if anything looks remotely good, we keep it. You've got to go through the agony of sounding very human at first, and then you work on it with the aid of technology. Computers have revolutionized things in many ways allowing me to work to a standard I could have only joked about fourty years ago.

Once the song is done and recorded, I like to go back and then cut the drums, because then I know exactly what the song needs, and what it doesn't need.

I don't know what people think in making record is like. But basically, I got a bunch of spaghetti and spaghetti sauce, and the whole band was staying at my house and we had a ball.

You go in and record and sing them some and you go back in and rerecord and sing them some more. That's kind of how I did this album [The Art of Elegance].

As an independent artist it is so easy to get caught up in websites, social media, merchandise, when I am going to put out an EP, fining a producer, finding a studio to record in and you have to remember at the end of the day you should be writing music.

I usually know the general emotion of a song, or the general feeling of it, and then I think I just get so excited by the act of recording. I love that process so much that I feel like if I knew exactly what I wanted I'd arrive at something too soon. Part of the reason I work on stuff for so long is just because I love working on it. It's not that I'm haunted by some ghost sound. I just have nothing else to do with my life. Some people like to obsessively shop online. I like to obsessively rack up studio bills.

We have always been thinking about different ways to perform electronic music, i.e. music made with machines.

The most gratifying thing, with no question, is making records.