Analog Recording Quotes

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.

When we recorded our first album sixteen track machines were the thing.

I love listening to old records. Stuff from the '70s, even disco and funk records and a lot of early rock albums - what's great about those recordings is that you can actually hear the true tones of the drums themselves.

If you record the sound of bacon in a frying pan and play it back, it sounds like the pops and cracks on an old 33 1/3 recording. Almost exactly like that. You could substitute it for that sound.

I'm really anti-option, so computers have been my nightmare with recording. I don't want endless tracks; I want less tracks. I want decisions to be made.

When digital recording came in about '84, everything started to follow into digital. Now, you've got the best recording media in the world, but it's not very pleasing to the ear.

I started getting back into buying old analog gear while we were recording. Lots of old drum machines and synths. It wasn't a conscious thing. I didn't consider myself a collector, but boxes of vintage gear would turn up virtually every day.

Vocally, I don't think analogue makes that much difference, but with guitars, it definitely makes some difference. With drums and bass, absolutely.

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

When I was really young, I was using VHS tapes to record.

When I write a record, I don't even touch a computer. I don't even bring my cell phone.

I've been arguing with people for 10 years about tape versus digital, and I believe tape is absolutely essential in getting the sound that's conducive to the enjoyment of music.

I don't like the way recording to digital sounds.

'It Still Moves' is really the only record in our catalog that I've always felt I wanted to remix. Part of the fun of that record was that we recorded it all to tape, and it was all super-duper organic.

I love music with real instruments. I'm not one of those guys that's a purist about analog vs. digital, but I love the analog approach. Sonically, I connect to that.

Some people record onto tape, and then they pay for the tape, and download those onto a hard drive. Initially in a Pro Tools program. Other people go straight into digital, and use no tape at all.

I love Sylvan Esso. I want to bring in more electronic elements, but also some analogue stuff. Stuff like '70s drum machines really fascinates me.

Everything is so computerized these days and it's all edited and everything. Everything sounds so perfect, and we just want to be a band that sounds like a band.

I've never been one to think it was cheating to sample this or to loop the drum part there - I've always done that. Even using four-track cassette recorders, I was always doing whatever I could to make it as good as I could.

The idea of letting a recording be a moment in time appealed to me. With digital recording, it's easy to create a perfect text of whatever song you have.

I don't do anything digital. Everything is analog, and that's a limitation for me. However, in my world, it's not a limitation at all because I don't create the type of music that would generally be created by musicians that work with digital recording studios, and/or digital equipment, as far as production is concerned.

At home I don't really have any drum machines or anything like that, I just have a piano and a cassette machine, an old-fashioned one, an old relic which I've always used.

To me, recording with live instruments and tape takes things back to an older sound that I like but that's still fresh.

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.

I think musicians like me are drawn to those older desks, not just because they're legend and lore but also because they do something really specific that is hard to emulate or re-create digitally.