Jason Molina Quotes

I really don't think records should be made in the manner where you sit and write, and when you're finished writing, you start recording. That just seems conventional and old-fashioned to me.

I'm thinking about recording everything to tape like it's 1991 and seeing how that sounds.

I just play intuitively and work the same way in the studio. I don't have any magical effects or anything that helps me to get my particular sound.

I get very deep into the writing and recording process.

I never write from concept. The beat is the beginning, and then I fill in the rest of the song into what it should be.

I'm not an artist that makes singles, I'm an artist that makes albums, and it's a totally different thing.

I usually enter the studio with a mix of songs that I've been listening to that are relevant to the sound I want to achieve.

There's a certain urgency that comes from the records of the early 60s before overdubbing and multitracking came into play.

Every album is just a greatest hits of whatever songs are on a pile when I go in to make a record.

I've always been interested in what happens in the studio.

I've always recorded the same way. I put down as many ideas as I have, then strip them away at the mixdown. It's better to have too much music than not enough.

I realized I liked being in the studio and working on translating the ideas into recordings.

I don't do concept records anymore - I just prefer doing good songs.

People are so into digital recording now they forgot how easy analog recording can be.

I don't really care about audio quality. If people saw some of the ways that I record stuff, they'd see I don't care in that respect. I obviously care about things sounding good, but I think quality exists through other things like emotionally connecting with a lyric or a feeling, or whatever.

Another thing to do with the blues is how they were recorded. They were done on the quick, and some of that stuff was made on wire, not even tape, let alone digital.

The way I like to start a new project is to take a cover song and make a stab at it, ideally one that has nothing to do with the people in the room.

When we were making Speaking in Tongues and Remain in Light, we were jamming. From that we were taking the best bits and then recording and improvising on top of those.

Back when I was jamming with Axl and the guys they had boxes of cassettes with song ideas. How do you know which ones you like now when you have that many ideas.

We had a simple 8-track studio set up in the record store where I worked. And just staying after work and experimenting, realizing what was possible with recording - that's why my project was called The Microphones at first. Because it wasn't even songs really. It was just sound.

A lot of people record on a laptop and use plug-ins, which might be OK for the kind of music that they're doing. But for the kind of music that I'm doing, that just doesn't work. I can't cut corners; everything has to be organic.

I play a little bit of everything. I beat on the walls. I whistle. I scream. I go outside and scream because it sounds cool when it's recorded. I play drums on a chair. I snap, clap... just anything to build the track and make it feel like I want it to.

My music sounds different because the techniques are archaic, seeing as most people only record digitally.

I really write at home on my own, and the demos themselves are very similar to the final recordings in a lots of ways.

Sometimes we'd just play acoustic guitar and try out the parts and make a library. We'd use a double cassette player and make little edits.