Professional Recording Quotes

I've never been in the studio world; TV is as close as I get to the more corporate approach to making entertainment.

I've been recording since 1993. It was a hobby for six of those years. In 1999, I decided to do it full time and take it seriously.

Coming from my bedroom in San Antonio to this big world and going from singing covers off my laptop to making music in this nice studio, making professional-sounding music - it's just weird.

To be fair, I did come out of nowhere. 'Ghost' was the first song I ever did in a studio, my first time ever cutting a professional vocal.

Even with Dream Theater, we track in a big studio and everything. But when it comes to doing leads, I don't really require a lot of studio to do that. I need a good sounding room and a Pro Tools rig, and some Neve mic-pres, and I'm good.

If you ever want to play bigger places, you need to have records that sound like you're playing in big places.

You can tell the difference between songs that were created in a garage and songs that were created in the studio.

Things like, when a total stranger says, 'I want you to record something for my forthcoming wedding,' that can be a bit tiresome. But it's a high-class problem. It doesn't hurt my feelings.

I sing all the time but I'd never gotten what it felt like to be in the recording studio, so it was definitely a learning process.

Quite often when I record a song, writing it and making a demo is the big thing and, after that, I think, how do I actually translate this into real life? A lot of the time I think I can't be bothered.

If we were making a record in Kentucky, there might be some more elements that recall a time, a place, or a relationship. Recording for the BBC you enter into this strange and wonderful, but kind of sterile, place with which you have no personal history, and that's the Maida Vale Studios at BBC in London.

I was, aged nine, the go-to kid in Minneapolis for a commercial voiceover.

My goal is to leave the producer with so many good takes, that he or she has a tough time deciding on the best one.

If I have a song that I feel is really one of my best songs, I like it to have a formal studio recording because I believe that something being officially released on a studio record gives it a certain authority that it doesn't quite have if it comes out on a live album or is just a part of your show, you know.

Before I won 'American Idol,' I'd never been in a professional studio at all. I'm getting more used to it. I'm really weird, though: I sing way better in a crowd of 3,000. It's easier than singing in front of 2.

I still have a lot of faith that there's very few people who are savvy enough to actually produce a good sounding copy of the record.