Marvin Ammori Quotes

The turntable is now an instrument at the Smithsonian.

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 am terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music will be put on records forever.

Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context.

When you use some of the more modern recording devices and Pro Tools, when you get into the technology, you are aching to get into some territory.

We forget to thank the scientists that began these musical inventions and systems. The guy that invented the phonograph and gramophone - Thomas Edison!

I've got nothing against records - I've spent my life making them - but they are a kind of historical blip.

For myself, I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the results of this evening's experiments. Astonished at the wonderful power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever.

There's an institution here called the National Sound Archive, and there's a character who works there, Paul Wilson. He takes a very special interest in the history of the music and advised Martin Davidson of the existence of these tapes.

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.

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

Lots of people think it was Jimmy Page who had the first fuzzbox. It wasn't, No! it wasn't me either.

Today's recording techniques would have been regarded as science fiction forty years ago.

With the advent of radio and recording, music became an industry rather than just a tradition.

In those days I don't' think they were even demos.

I've never considered musical equipment very sacred.

I had this old wind-up phonograph when I was a kid, and I'd listen to records. And the radio.

Ideally, the music composed these days should sound much better because of the technology, right? But that's not the fact. The sounds that you hear out of technological recording are programmed sounds coming out of a computer.

The iPod is not a new category. Music is not new. It's not a speculative market. It's a very, very large market. It's been around for thousands of years and will be around as long as humans exist.

I told [Kruesi] I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted "Mary had a little lamb," etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly. On first words spoken on a phonograph.

I grew up I guess you'd say in the cassette era.

Pro Tools is an incredible resource. I think it's enabled me to do things that I wouldn't have been able to do without this kind of computer editing.

We live in the digital age and, unfortunately, it’s degrading our music, not improving it It’s not that digital is bad or inferior, it’s that the way it’s being used isn’t doing justice to the art. The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have to make that choice.

You were playing your instruments? Or do you have tape recorders under your seats?

A place like Sound City, which was just a big, beautiful room where you would hit record and capture the sound of the performer - a place like that isn't necessarily in demand anymore.