Betty Wright Quotes

I sit and write songs alone and then get together with people to help me flesh it out into a recording.

We'll set up a demo session and try to knock out eight or ten songs and make them sound as close as we can to a record with the money and time we have.

The real producers back in the day didn't sit there and play every single instrument. They made sure the record had the best performance out of everyone involved possible.

Putting together a hit record is like putting together a puzzle.

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

I'm interested in creating a little sound world for songs, really crafting it, building it, and making it like a little doll's house with little things inside it, staircases and rooms and everything kind of relates to everything else. I've never seen it as drums, bass, guitar and vocals in very separate spaces.

When you're making a record, you try to achieve stylistically what fits on you. Like a good old coat, you know what I mean?

We listened to a lot of Rolling Stones and Beatles records when we were recording. They were really good at not playing loud, but generating really big sounds out of everything.

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

We spent a month in LA using a pool of musicians, a string arranger called Benjamin Wright, some great backing singers, and it gave tracks like Dynamite, which was written there, that kind of flavour.

I want to make an album with just great beats and big vocals and just amazing lyrics.

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.

When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble.

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.

I tend to think about so many different things on a recording. I'll be trying to tune into what the drummer's doing, trying to keep everyone playing the groove and other things like making sure the piano's in a nice pocket.

I spend time editing and massaging each note. Then I start layering with different instruments, adding harmonies, counterpoint, and whatever the song calls for. Then I arrange it into a whole piece, and decide where I need to add live musicians. It takes a lot of time, but it is very satisfying once it is complete.

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. On paper, though, it's all stripped back. The musical idea is the one that wins.

I talked to the record company about what I had in mind. They said they wanted something lush. I figured the best thing to do was let them hear what I had in mind.

I was a good sight reader and I could sing two or three of these jingles a day. An orchestra would come in for half an hour, and then the singers would come in and knock 'em out, and go on to the next one. I was the voice of Budweiser and Almond Joy.

When I produce a record, I roll up my sleeves; I'm not one of those passive guys. I really get in there and make sure every note is measured. I tell the bass player, 'You have to play it like this,' or I tell the drummer, 'It's got to be like this.'

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.

I've had a couple of guys that I've had co-produce records with me through my career, and it's fun to work with a co-producer.

When you produce an album, you're dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it.

I've got my own studio, and I've got four- to five-hundred unreleased tracks. I've got stuff that's electronic, orchestral, jazz, I've got rock, I've got metal, you know, I don't have polka.

So I'll set a cycle in motion and pop it into record and I'll lay down a drum pattern, a bass line, a keyboard and guitar part, and once the groove is going I launch into the song and sing my song over the top.