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The Great Gatsby
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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Steve Albini Quotes

As a recording engineer – someone who is deeply embroiled in the process of making records every day – you see trends and fads run through the social organization of the population of musicians in the same way that they would run through a high school.

– Steve Albini

If the label presents them with a contract that the band don’t want to sign, all the label has to do is wait. There are a hundred other bands willing to sign the exact same contract, so the label is in a position of strength.

– Steve Albini

I moved to Chicago in 1980 to go to college.

– Steve Albini

It betrays hubris on the part of the artist to think his medium is limiting him, and I think we all recognize this.

– Steve Albini

I don’t think anyone has exhausted the range of sound possible in a conventional rock band, but people do become slaves to their own easiest techniques.

– Steve Albini

Doubt the conventional wisdom unless you can verify it with reason and experiment.

– Steve Albini

A more important reason is that the bands will intuitively trust someone they think is a peer, and who speaks fondly of the same formative rock and roll experiences.

– Steve Albini

In 1980, I moved to Chicago, and I recorded demo tapes for my friends’ bands, and in 1981, the first Big Black record – the first thing I did that was an actual record.

– Steve Albini

Make no mistake about it: once a band has signed a letter of intent, they will either eventually sign a contract that suits the label or they will be destroyed.

– Steve Albini

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, there was a slightly retro drum sound that was popular in hip-hop music called the 808 bass drum sound. It was the bass drum sound on the 808 drum machine, and it’s very deep and very resonant, and was used as the backbone as a lot of classic hip-hop tracks.

– Steve Albini

There is a lot of use of ProTools in professional studios, but this is mostly for the special effects it allows, not for sound quality. These special effects soon fall out of fashion, and I don’t think this trend will define studios permanently.

– Steve Albini

Find people who think like you and stick with them. Make only music you are passionate about. Work only with people you like and trust. Don’t sign anything.

– Steve Albini

Know what you’re trying to do before you do it. Turning knobs at random isn’t enlightening any more than throwing paint at a wall blindfolded will let you paint a nice picture.

– Steve Albini

The band cannot sign to another label or even put out its own material unless they are released from their agreement, which never happens.

– Steve Albini

In heaven, after antipasti, the first course will be pasta.

– Steve Albini

The woman I am currently crazy about was a vegetarian for a year until I started dating her. As is the case with most vegetarians, she had never eaten properly prepared meat, only commercially packaged or otherwise abused flesh.

– Steve Albini

Harmonics are vibrations a fraction of the length of the vibrating string, which add higher-pitched and more complex content to the notes. With a dull instrument, the harmonics die out, but with a sustaining instrument, the harmonics continue to sound along with the fundamental note.

– Steve Albini

Buy groceries and feed yourself, even on the road.

– Steve Albini

By now all rock bands are wise enough to be suspicious of music industry scum.

– Steve Albini

Many rock musicians are excellent cooks, I’ve found, and those that are prefer to eat their own cooking in the studio. I encourage this behavior as I also enjoy the benefits of fresh food.

– Steve Albini

You see something happen to a population whereby everyone adopts something that’s just preposterous in a way that makes it normal instantly. If any one person prior to the rash of puka shells, for example, was seen wearing puka shells, he would look like an idiot. But when everyone is wearing them, it instantly makes them normal.

– Steve Albini

Cranking the Auto-Tune is so easy to do that there’s almost no systemic resistance to trying it. So when someone’s stuck for an idea, that’s what they do. I mean, to the extent that it’s been embraced by an entire idiom of club music and culture.

– Steve Albini

For less than the cost of a Big Mac, fries and a Coke, you can buy a loaf of fresh bread and some good cheese or roast beef, which you will enjoy much more.

– Steve Albini

If I’m working as an engineer for another band, the responsibility for brilliance pretty much rests on their shoulders. I think I’m pretty good, but I’m not good enough to turn a trout into a sausage, or the other way around.

– Steve Albini

We have no general conceptual thrust for the band, other than trying to make music that keeps our interest. When things are novel, they are probably things we have discovered by accident or investigation rather than by design.

– Steve Albini

I’m busy doing my job, and being a loudmouth doesn’t appeal to me as much as when I was younger and had the youthful delusion that I was smarter than everybody else.

– Steve Albini