Beck
Being able to take musical ideas through every iteration is attractive to me. Granted, not everyone's going to want to listen to that, but it should exist.
I have heard some stuff that might be influenced by my records, but it's usually pretty wacky and off-the-wall, which is kind of annoying, to be frank.
Most of my early records were not cohesive at all, just collections of demos recorded in different years. 'Odelay' was the first time I actually got to go in the studio and record a piece of music in a continuous linear fashion, although that was written over a year.
I can't tell you how many things I've worked on where I sat on it for a few years, and then somebody else did something very similar. Whether it's some weird vocal effect you hear on another record, or a drum beat, or even a song title, a subject matter, or a mixture of different kinds of music.
There's more things that I'd like to do. You know, each song is a little bit of a puzzle. I see most of them as just failed attempts.
I feel like I've spent the majority of my time touring and traveling, so if I reduced the actual time making music, it's probably four and a half years at the most.
Especially in music, you wonder, Okay, should I still be doing this? Like, are you overstaying your welcome at the party? But I don't know.
I didn't want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial.
When I was a kid and putting out my first records, there was a lot made out of the fact that the '50s/'60s generation was so dominant.
Your heart is a drum keeping time with everyone.Collection: Heart
I think I gave indications early on that mine wasn't just going to be a commercial, er, career. If that were the case, then the first record would have been 10 versions of 'Loser.' I always thought it would be interesting if there was no such thing as gold and platinum records, or record deals, and people were just making music. What would the music sound like?Collection: Thinking
The limitations are limitless.Collection: Limitless
I think everybody should just turn off their TV machines and make up their own songs about whatever comes to mind-their couch, their friends their loaves of bread. Everybody's got their own songs. There should be so many songs out there that it all turns into one big sound and we can put the whole thing into a pickup truck and let it roll off the edge of the Grand Canyon.Collection: Song
There's some quality you get when you're not totally comfortable.Collection: Quality
Let the desert wind cool your aching head. Let the weight of the world - drift away insteadCollection: Wind
You can't write if you can't relate.Collection: Writing
As music becomes more computer-based, it's lost some emotional impact.Collection: Emotional
I've done so many albums where I've been in the studio for 14 hours a day for six months just trying to come up with things on my own. It's a nice change helping other people with their music and not being all about what I'm trying to do myself.Collection: Nice
Set your guitars and banjos on fire and before you write a song smoke a pack of whiskey and it'll all take care of itself.Collection: Song
I grew up I guess you'd say in the cassette era.Collection: Eras
With modern recording techniques, and living in the Pro Tools era, the process gets really drawn-out, and it can become painstaking.Collection: Technique
Originally, the lyrics to "Girl" were really upbeat, and then it didn't work for me somehow. You need the dichotomy. If you're doing something happy and light, you need the shadows.Collection: Girl
There are certain records from the 80s and early 90s that you love because the songs are great, but you don't go to them as an example of great production. Over the last 20 years, myself and a lot of other musicians my age have tried to discover things in 50s, 60s, and 70s recording techniques that were lost or discarded. We've all been trying to crack this code. It's been an important period in the last 15 years, reclaiming some of those lost approaches to making records.Collection: Song
When I pull out vinyl - which isn't that often anymore - it's undeniable that I get a different feeling. There's a different physiology happening between the sound waves and the body that doesn't happen with music playing off the computer.Collection: Feelings
I'm always looking for older equipment and ways of recording, but you can't escape the fact that it's all going to be digitized and reduced. I do think music sounds better when it's on tape and more simply recorded. 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 wonder if it's going to go back to that. Sometimes I think it has to. As music becomes more computer-based, it's lost some emotional impact.Collection: Believe
It's hard to make music knowing that it's not going to be received by the listener in the way that it should be.Collection: Knowing
You just want to go back to those 70s albums. Even a lot of the 90s indie records were still done on tape, and you hear the difference.Collection: Differences
It's so easy to criticize your own time, and I see that as a problem, even for myself, as a listener.Collection: Problem
It gets a little bit troublesome when you have something that's overcompressed that shouldn't be.Collection: Littles
For the records I've work on over the last 10 years, I get sent the really compressed version and the non-compressed version, and oftentimes you end up going with the more compressed one because it's what people's ears are attuned to. I think the bigger problem is saturation and people being desensitized.Collection: Thinking
There's a different physiology happening between the sound waves and the body that doesn't happen with music playing off the computer. About five years ago, I got a turntable that hooks up to your computer, and I put the vinyl in there and I listened to it back-to-back with a CD, and it didn't even compare. But people don't have time to go track down vinyl, lower it in, all that. And they probably don't care. It's hard to make music knowing that it's not going to be received by the listener in the way that it should be.Collection: People
You spend so many months and years in the studio, and you see the clock ticking and so much time spent on the minutiae of technical things. And I just thought it'd be fun to do something extremely fast and get that rush of something that had some energy, something that you weren't tired of when you finished it.Collection: Fun
When I did "Top of the Pops" for the first time, Ace of Base was one of the other bands, and I have a memory of them on a small stage next to me in the TV studio. A memory of their performance is burned into my mind. Seared.Collection: Memories
I'm more critical of my songwriting than anybody, but I've worked really hard in the last five to 10 years to improve. I didn't take it all that seriously when I started. It was a little bit of a stigma to being a songwriter or a folkie back then. I did a lot of send-ups of sensitive singer-songwriter stuff when I was starting out, which limited my development as a songwriter in a way. I wasn't really fully given license to explore that until the mid-90s. I'm still working on it; I'm a little bit of a late bloomer.Collection: Sensitive
Technology was something I avoided when I started out - I didn't even have electric guitars. Only played acoustic. But after a while, I realized that it's important to embrace things that are available in your time, and try to do something different with them.Collection: Technology
Maybe certain aspects of what I was doing were reacting against what was happening or what people said, too. That's something that happens when you're starting out. After some time goes by and you get a little perspective, you realize that you don't need to react. You can just carry on with what you're doing. That took me a long time figure out; I've only gotten to that point in the last five or 10 years.Collection: Long
It was disturbing to me that an idea or a song could become something so different from what you originally intended. It's like if a friend took a stupid picture of you at a party on their phone, and the next thing you knew, it was on every billboard.Collection: Song
The only way I was allowed to play was by convincing bands to let me do a few songs while they set up. That went on for years.Collection: Song
Eventually, if you're experimenting with a sound that's unfamiliar, it gets absorbed, and somebody comes and does it better, and it becomes part of a vocabulary.Collection: Vocabulary
I didn't even have a computer until like 10 years ago. I was still using a typewriter until 2002.Collection: Typewriters
Sometimes, reissues can be revelatory, or put the original record in a different light, but those are rare.Collection: Light
There's a perception that if an artist produces another artist, they're going to imprint on them. But I'm the opposite.Collection: Artist
There are a lot of technical studio things I've learned or figured out, and I feel like I could use those things to help other people with what they're doing.Collection: Helping Others
There are certain records that you love because the songs are great, but you don't go to them as an example of great production.Collection: Song
I'm always looking for older equipment and ways of recording, but you can't escape the fact that it's all going to be digitized and reduced.Collection: Way
I enjoy recording live better, but I think by the nature of it you are going to end up with something that's a little bit more traditional.Collection: Thinking
With my own music, I try to get away from things that are familiar and things that would be easy for me to go to.Collection: Trying
I've been practicing for years, trying to figure out how to record an entire band live.Collection: Years
Somebody else is satisfied by five Bentleys. I'm satisfied by a beautiful string arrangement.Collection: Beautiful