Multi-Track Recording Quotes

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.

Les Paul was my godfather.

My manager came up with the idea of taking a Pro Tool rig out on the road to record every night and I thought it was a great idea. I felt like it would be good to record over a certain period of time and then take the best performances of that collection of recordings. It appealed to me that it wasn't going to be from just one location.

I'd do a demo recording by myself, layering instruments on top of one another, and while that's fun, it doesn't have the same impact as getting some great players together in a great studio with a great engineer and producer, then waiting for the magic.

I met Les Paul when I was about 5. I was taken to see him perform and the place was sold out, just packed and full of really great musicians.

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.

We always record with the whole band. That's key to capturing the feel, especially trying to get a good basic track.

Whenever I record more than two or three layers, it starts to get cluttered up, and you can't hear the cut of the guitars as good. It's hard to get four guitars to hit at exactly the same time and keep the attack tight.

If there's ever a live record that deserved to be mixed in surround sound, it's 'Frampton Comes Alive.'

I love the weird overdub style, like 'The Madcap Laughs' by Syd Barrett, where you can tell it's being overdubbed and it's kind of warbly. It creates a different experience. Or the 'White Album,' where you can tell it's overdubbing. But there's something about a band in a room - it's a feeling you can't replicate. There's a feel to the music.

I loved the idea of recording. The idea of sound-on-sound-recording captured me as a young kid, and once I realized what it was I had an epiphany. Before I was even playing the guitar, I would create these lists of how I would record things and overdub them, like Led Zeppelin song, 'I could put this guitar on this track...' and so on.

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?

My main objective with a home studio - I could get into doing full band demos - but my first objective is to cut things like guitar tracks and solos at home.

When you're on the road, you've got to have your four-track - or some kind of recording device to jam on and have a good time.

We don't live in an ancient era. Today, collaboration doesn't mean two singers standing next to each other at the mic to sing together.

I'm from the pre-Pro Tools era where you had to meet up with the artist and go over things if you wanted to record a track.

You just went right in and just recorded songs and listened them, and if there were any mistakes, then we would correct them and just went on... one take or two take.

When I was a kid, I played drums, and when I first got a 4-track, I would put down drumbeats and then do the rest of the tracks on top.

I used to link up boom boxes, record one take, play it into another boom box then play all that back into the other one until I had six tracks. It was unlistenable!

I tend to use different microphones, different mic techniques, and different recording mediums - like analogue tape - that evoke multiple eras of recorded music at the same time.

I didn't grow up working on 24-track - the first two Taste albums were eight-track and we always had tracks left over - we couldn't believe it, either!

I used to play on Phil Spector's records, and he liked to use three pianists.

I think that technology has both introduced new sounds but also allowed an increasingly painterly approach to recording music as you can now paint over what you've done and more and more refine an existing performance.

I like that kind of classic-type sound. A lot of my favorite albums were tracked live, with a four-piece band. I love the way those albums sound, but I want to make records that sound like that in the way I like to make stuff.

I thought I'd do everything on four-track, and then I'll record every instrument myself in a studio, and then I'll have a solo album released by spring.