Dimebag Darrell Quotes

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.

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.

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

Darrell is really good in the studio. I mean, he has a real working knowledge of how the process works, and what sounds good coming back over tape, and how the stuff works together.

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 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.

Singing and playing live can be difficult. Like, in the studio, I would record either the music track first or the vocal first. I don't necessarily do them together.

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

Every time we go into the studio and use a different engineer or producer I try to look, listen and learn their approach. That has helped with the gear I look for to use live and in the studio.

When you've got insane drums and a lot of guitar, it's really hard to mix the vocals, to mix it all well.

I don't like overdubs, never liked them.

When I started making my own records, I had this idea of drowning out the singer and putting the rest in the foreground. It was the background that interested me.

I don't try to make 15 musicians sound like two each.

I could have gone on to be an engineer full time, except that there was more demand for my playing. But the love of working the board never leaves you.

I just spend my life studying the manufacture of sound and picture and my education, if you like, has come from what I've chosen to make sounds and pictures on.

I do have electric guitars, because I've always believed, especially when I'm working in the studio with other bands as producer, that there should be a really nice Strat around.

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

Sometimes when I do an overdub solo, they'll keep four or five of my attempts and then mix the bits that they like to make a solo up out of them. It's not against the rules, really - I can learn my own solos, then. But that's the whole beauty of multi-track recording, isn't it?

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 think the greatest records we've ever heard, from Zeppelin to Purple to Sabbath to The Who, were all recorded in the studio live.

Well actually, we are working on the live album from the shows in Japan. I'm trying to get that finished.

I try to do things in one take, but doubling rhythm parts is always difficult, especially if you want things to cut the way I want them to cut.

Dub has been a big influence in terms of production. It's inspired so many people and so much music - in terms of music where mixing desk was the instrument. Central to that is the echo chamber, and I think there's a little bit of a romantic thing there.

The Police could get away with doing an entire record with really no audible reverb, which I have always admired and thought would be a lot of fun to try to re-create.