Brian Setzer Quotes

I felt that the studio recording process makes you stand still too long.

Usually, when you go in to make a record, you have 30 songs, and you record 30 of them, and 12 of them make it to the record.

We always record with the whole band. That's key to capturing the feel, especially trying to get a good basic track.

Normally when I work with bands I'm trying to refine and improve what's already there.

When I was recording from '70 to '82, I always played piano and laid the tracks down. But I used to talk to the other musicians while the track was playing.

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 whole thing with recording is you have to know when to turn off the tape machine and just stop recording because you want to keep fixing, fixing, fixing, you know?

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.

When we recorded our first album sixteen track machines were the thing.

I don't think people realize how much work it takes to make an album.

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

You just went right in and just recorded songs and listened them, and if there were any mistakes, then we would correct them and just went on... one take or two take.

I usually make records very quickly. I usually go in and record them and mix them, and I'm done within a couple of weeks.

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

The records I make, I'm there from the writing of the first note through the click tracks to the miking of the drums to the editing of everything to the production to the vocals to the artwork.

A lot of getting a song done is booking the studio time.

Our recordings, you feel that it's been, not labored, but you feel that it's been constructed in a way where sometimes it's hard for us to create the feeling that this was done in a room.

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.

I'm not somebody who can tell if the song is good enough to be pushed until I hear what it sounds like after all the bells and whistles are put on it.

You get the beats. You write to them. You go in the studio and lay it down. Hopefully, a song comes out sounding good. If it comes out sounding good, you put it to the side with the rest of the other good ones, and you try to decide which ones you're gonna use on the album.

I look at making a record and being in a recording studio as more of a craft; You have to be so much more careful and play simpler.

From the engineer to the producer, all of these roles are critical to creating a song.

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