Steve Cropper Quotes

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.

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

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

Any effects created before 1975 were done with either tape or echo chambers or some kind of acoustic treatment. No magic black boxes!

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.

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.

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.

The records that I like, they have life and warmth and soul in them. Like the slap back on Scotty Moore's guitar on 'Mystery Train.' You're not gonna get that in a computer. You're gonna want a live room, you're gonna wanna bounce the tape, you're gonna want real musicians, in a room, vibin' off of each other.

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 write the songs, go in and record them, then I listen to everything and decide how it all fits together.

I think anyone who knows the audio process knows what mixing and mastering is.

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

When you finish a record, I look at it like a photograph. It's already taken. You got it the way you wanted it to be. You edit it, make sure the light and contrast are right, then you just put it away, and that's your photograph. Then you don't really think about it anymore.

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

I was born in the overdub years. I wish there wasn't such a thing as a multitrack tape player, because what you heard would be the record.

I think I make good beats, but when it's not mastered correctly, it can definitely make it sound like it's not a good beat, and that has been an issue sometimes with me in the past.

I've got my own studio, so I sit in my studio writing and if I get a great take, that's the take.

No compression or as little as possible - that's how you get a good recording.

When you make a record, you listen to it literally hundreds of times. When it's done and you can't do anything else, I never listen to my records.

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

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

All I know is that when I mix to digital and when I mix to tape I compare them and the tape always wins out.

Pro Tools was invented to quicken the recording process.

I like noise. It's always puzzled me why one of the goals of contemporary recording is to get rid of noise and to eliminate any element of a performance.

I love sending stuff to Usher because it always sounds better than me.