James Hetfield Quotes

The room is the most important thing about recording.

Well, they put me in a booth and then did some nice things to the speaker to make it come out sounding ok.

I prefer playing in the studio because you have much more control over things.

We spent a lot of time on that record with the sound and recorded it on the Paramount sound stage which is this huge room where the sound is reflected but the reflection is so late and comes from so far away that it doesn't blur the music but gives you a room nonetheless.

I now have a home recording studio, which I can operate entirely on my own, as well as a portable version of the same which allows me to record anywhere I like and simply swap out the hard drives for use in the home studio.

Then I loved the fact that we were actually recording live.

To me, there is nothing better than me going into the studio with a live band and hearing those violins and that echo and that sound. I mean I loved it.

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.

For live you need a microphone for the snare and the high hat, the kick drum, a nice stereo overhead and one for the toms - you can get away with using four mikes.

Recording studios are interesting; a lot of people say - and I agree - that you should have a lot of wood in a recording studio. It gets a kind of a sweeter sound.

Don't play too loud! Bleed-through on stage can be brutal to front-of-house sound.

I recorded 'Play God' in a shed. I don't know how we got it to sound as good as it did.

If we were making a record in Kentucky, there might be some more elements that recall a time, a place, or a relationship. Recording for the BBC you enter into this strange and wonderful, but kind of sterile, place with which you have no personal history, and that's the Maida Vale Studios at BBC in London.

I go in and sing the song and arrange it and mix it and that's it. It's no different than playing in clubs.

Micing it from two different angles in front of the speaker sounds huge, and it's so simple.

I personally don't like to use as many effects because when you play live, something always goes wrong.

The first eight songs we were using someone else's monitors and it is hard to follow the changes when you are jamming if you can't hear those who you are jamming with.

As a DJ I am never 100 percent in charge of the sound. The sound levels are controlled by someone at the sound board of the venue.

The way they had the room that I was in set up, there was some sort of sound deadening platform that I had to stand on in order to get close enough to the microphone.

We were gradually playing larger venues and in the early days PA systems were kind of non-existent. So to play loud, we had to use louder equipment. The PA systems back then didn't mic the instruments - only the vocals.

The studio that we mix in is still in Chicago.

I've had the luxury of owning my own studio, 24 analogue, 48 digital, endless effects, endless hardcore gear, that I don't have to rent, I don't get stuck with the bills, it's all mine.

I want to take some jams and really concentrate on hooking up with Page because, since he's the only one not next to me, and his sound is mainly coming from my monitor rather than through the air, it's a little harder for me to hook up with him.

The four of us couldn't have made a record with the time left over when we were shooting the show. We were on stage from 7.30 in the morning 'til 7 at night. Later on, when there was a break from filming, and we were sick of doing it the old way.

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.