Stephen Malkmus Quotes

My dad got me the same mic I use on everything now - this $200 mic from Guitar Center.

When I record in a studio I don't use an amp. I go directly into the board, so I can get that very fat, full sound - which is my favorite sound.

Sometimes I like them artificial and sometimes I like them real. And the reason is because sometimes I like a real close sound. And I like a very specific snare sound and I can't get that in the big room.

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

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.

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

When I first started recording music, I was actually singing about microphones, equipment, recording.

[Sam Phillips] laughed at me. I just didn't like the way I Walk The Line sounded to me. I didn't know I sounded that way. And I didn't like it. I don't know. But he said let's give it a chance, and it was just a few days until - that's all it took to take off.

I sing all the time but I'd never gotten what it felt like to be in the recording studio, so it was definitely a learning process.

When you're recording, if you're not really clean in your playing, it sounds like a mess.

The studio part, to me, can be pretty laborious. You're inside for hours on end and can be pretty frustrating to get the sound you hear in your head to come out of those speakers.

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

It was rehearsing in the studio, at which point they were setting up the sound, and once we'd got the thing together they'd actually record it, without us knowing sometimes!

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.

Pro Tools was invented to quicken the recording process.

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.

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.

In recording, you're trying to make something work sonically - getting the right inflection on the right guitar sound - and maybe a part that would be musically great doesn't sound as cool.

I have a recording that I did of instrumental songs.

My profession is called record production.

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

I just want people to hear the music the way it's suppose to sound, the way we meant for them to hear it. You sit in the studio all this time and make the music, tweak it, try to get it perfect. They should be able to hear it that way.

I think people can just make things now. It's kind of what happened with the music industry. Before, a band couldn't afford to go into a nice studio, or if they were going to go into a nice studio, they had to record twenty-five songs in two days. That's not a healthy workflow for anyone.