Miguel Quotes

No matter how great we get with digital formats of instrumentation, nothing really quite duplicates the real thing.

When I write a song, I always start on acoustic guitar, because that's a good test of a song, when it's really open and bare. You can often mislead yourself if you start with computers and samples and programming because you can disguise a bad song.

I think when we do our job right, our artists don't sound like anybody else. I have a real hard time with voices that sound like other big voices.

We went for the best overall feel on each song. There are no musical overdubs at all. It's a true live record; it's one of the few true live records out there.

This was totally influenced by me and the direction that I am writing about and the stuff that I am writing about. There is just no way that you can be as intense as what I have been through in my life over a drum beat machine, sample, or loop; it's just not going to happen.

It's good to play 100 per cent live - no tricks, no samples, no messing about.

I always take care to have interesting chord progressions, because you can have the best sound design in the club, and you'll kill it in the club, but in five years, kids will have better sound design. But if your music is good, you'll always be able to listen to it, even in 20 or 50 years.

I've always thought live albums were cop-outs.

From the beginning, I wanted to make dance music with a human element to it.

Technology has made it much easier to make and manipulate music. Studio-driven, machine-driven music does not always transcend into being a good live act. Many current acts are great live, but many cannot cut it live. The music is not organic.

There's a humble beauty about listening to period instruments that I like.

It's meant to reaffirm the validity of that music - clean, minimalist, honest, classic music.

For me it always comes down to what is a good song and I'm very old fashioned in the way that I like to make songs that have something classic about them whether you can play them with an orchestra or an electro synthesizer or an acoustic guitar.

I think the fans really wanna hear the songs the way they sound on the record.

People buy my albums, and I love my albums when I do them because we try to record live with that same energy, but I can never get the energy that I have when I'm live.

When you hear a great two-track of a performance in Carnegie Hall, let's say, it sounds like you're right there at that moment. It's true to reality. And the closer it gets, once it gets too technical, it becomes very tinny to hear notes. It doesn't sound right. It has to be natural.

I think a lot of bands would rather put mediocre rock tracks on their album to try to maintain some sort of testosterone badge of courage.

It's either you finna create your own wave, you finna sound like me or you finna sound like G Herbo, you finna sound like Chance The Rapper, you finna sound like Juice Wrld. You ain't gonna get too far 'cause you sound like somebody. So, create your own lane and do your own style.

I like live-sounding things.

In terms of the production, the style I use is what I see as the 'Lisa Stansfield sound' and I would hope that when anyone puts on one of my songs they don't even have to listen to my voice to know this is a Lisa Stansfield song, because of the way it sounds.

It's important to me that my music stands out. 'Taki Taki' doesn't sound like anything else out there, and it's hard to do that when you are on the road all the time, but it's really important to me that how people feel about my work. It was the same with 'Magenta Riddim.'

That's the most important part of all the music I produce: making sure the artist is bringing themselves out in the music.

This was the rule that I had when we made 'Frampton Comes Alive!': being known as a live performer, I'm not going to go into the studio and overdub.

I'm not even going to lie - when I'm in the studio, I'm not like, 'Alright, let me make a hit.' I just try to make good music to the best of my ability.

You have to find a sound that reflects what our souls feel like inside, how our bodies actually feel. That's why we made our own beats. We couldn't find a producer who could give us the feeling to match our lyrics.