Audio Mixing Quotes

I do most of my vocals - aside from a couple of little one-shot vocal samples. I record everything into the Saffire with an SM58 then scratch it with loads of plug-ins. I don't do much vocoding to be honest. All my vocals are usually done with Melodyne and a ton of other plug-ins to make it sound weird.

All of my favorite records have vocals high in the mix, even if it's music that wasn't necessarily mainstream.

There's a couple of fills on the 'Head Job' album. The title track sounds huge, I love it, and there's a few fills in there.

I have a very limited knowledge of recording, but the miracle of being able to capture sounds on magnetic tape and the miracle of electricity, and these little magnetic particles, is amazing to me.

What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

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.

When I'm sitting in the studio, a mix isn't done till I feel it in my gut.

I don't like overdubs, never liked them.

When you finish a record, I look at it like a photograph. It's already taken. You got it the way you wanted it to be. You edit it, make sure the light and contrast are right, then you just put it away, and that's your photograph. Then you don't really think about it anymore.

In fact, I had to make an enormous adjustment to this, not only in listening to it but in playing with it. It's a full sound. In some instances, you must have the volume to get the effect.

I grew up around electronic instruments. To me, the turntable is an electronic device. At the same time, I had access to drum machines and keyboards through my uncle; then track recorders into computers. At an early age, I was messing with computers more than most hip-hop musicians.

That's what happens nowadays with people working on computers. They can so easily fix things with their mouse and take out all the, 'Oh, somebody coughed in the background; we need to take that out' - or somebody hit a bad note. Those are all the best moments.

It's lovely being a producer. It's really a lot of fun and I can learn a lot.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I'm watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they're painted, could be art. With music, you're a little bit limited, of course, because it's only audio.

I did sound for a number of years, so I know the pain of the sound mixer on a set where everybody was talking.

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.

Especially early on, I had no idea what I was going to be asked to do when I walked into a studio. I was doing 26 sessions a week - all day, all night.

When I'm writing film music, I feel like I'm more a filmmaker than a composer. It's more about what the film needs. I'm basically part of the team that's creating a film, and the music is a very important part, but it's just one part of many.

I know that if I went to other studios, like in Vancouver, that those are set up to be as professional and as true, so it's just a different flavour, it's a different sound, but I think both have their place.

I have never taken more than two weeks to record an album throughout my career.

We're so used to everything being properly manicured, like you can hear every footstep in a movie, you can hear every bit of dialogue, and everything is in its place.

Engineering and mixing are absolutely key. Once a song is done, for me personally, it's usually two or three days to get the mix down.

On 'Metallica,' I recorded six or seven different guitar solos for almost every song, took the best aspects of each solo, mapped out a master solo and made a composite. Then I learned how to play the composite solo, tightened it up and replayed it for the final version.

I used Coldplay's mixer, Michael H. Brauer, on 'Roadsinger'; he's brilliant. He won a Grammy for their record.

A lot of times, when you record something, the album becomes less about the music and more technical.