Danny Elfman Quotes

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 can't get that live and I don't have the time to take the tape, after I've finished recording it, into a little studio somewhere else where I can get a different kind of percussion sound.

I used to think that all great recordings happened at about 3 A.M.

We record a lot of our shows, we record our soundchecks.

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

That's why you go to a nice studio. You can get a magic take. You don't really have to do anything to it.

I remember that the bass was turned up slightly more on the mix from last week, and I thought that was good - or whatever. Like, there were some little things in there that he said that he came to, like, really enjoy my opinion or at least, like, my little comments on the songs. So I was kind of destined to probably be a studio rat.

Being in a recording studio is a very different feel from performing onstage. I mean, obviously, you can't just go in and do what you would do onstage. It reads differently.

We were never happy with the way cello was recorded, and we wanted to experiment in the studio to make the cello rock as much as possible. On the second album, we had great help from Bob Ezrin, who helped us develop our sound even more.

It's always been difficult to make a good record. To be perfectly honest with you, it's really about the person that's pushing the buttons. No matter what type of equipment you have, you still have to have a certain talent to be able to make a good record.

What producers did was mostly recording in the studio, so it never changed our sound just that much.

We gave up on the idea of trying to make the record a good representation of the live performance.

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

To get my sound in the studio, I double guitar tracks, and when it gets to the lead parts, the rhythm drops out, just like it's live. I'm very conscious of that.

I loved the idea of recording. The idea of sound-on-sound-recording captured me as a young kid, and once I realized what it was I had an epiphany. Before I was even playing the guitar, I would create these lists of how I would record things and overdub them, like Led Zeppelin song, 'I could put this guitar on this track...' and so on.

I've got time, I hope, to make lots of quiet records. So quiet you won't be able to hear them.

I like home recordings and studio recordings just as much as each other - I don't think one is better - but for this record I wanted to see what I could do in a real studio with real producers.

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

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.

I was 17 and just learning what high fidelity was, what good sound was, and learning the mechanics of tape machines. It was a real education, going right from the consumer end to the record factory.

Most of our stuff was trial and error. You live with a tape recorder, you turn it on, you play the song and you listen to it.

I have a recording that I did of instrumental songs.

I'm sure I'll go back again and record in the digital process.

I always say that when I was recording with Phil Spector, he would not let me really sing, you know? And even to make me sound younger, he would speed the track up. He still wanted that real nice, little, quiet, sweet little sound.

All my writing, I always do it in the studio, 'cause everything sounds good. The piano's there, the keyboards; if you want to put strings on something... And everything sounds good when it's in the cans; it sounds killer.