Beck Quotes

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.

Technology was something I avoided when I started out - I didn't even have electric guitars. Only played acoustic.

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 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.

I enjoy the collaboration. I always envied people in bands who got to have that interaction.

I'm just taking one step at a time. I could zigzag one way, but it's not usually on purpose.

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.

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.

I love British humor. It's just so - surreal.

I just go in the studio and write on the spot and see what comes out.

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 did that Grammys thing - I did a little freeform poem.

The limitations are limitless.

There are plenty of Minutemen. People willing to be Minutemen. Where are the people that want to be George Washington? Where are the Benjamin Franklins? Where is Sam Adams? Where is John Adams?

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.

You have to shelve a lot of your inspiration. There's only so much you can do with one record.

In Japan, you get on the bullet train or the airplane, and I loved the little speeches the stewardesses would do. They even do little speeches before you play gigs.

There's 40 or 50 songs that nobody's heard that I've done in between albums. There's a whole evolution from Midnite Vultures to Sea Change that's never been released.

I have for four years now been ringing the bell. Economic Holocaust is coming. Economic day of reckoning is coming.

I remember you would record a guitar part, and we would have to sit there for 15 or 20 minutes waiting for the computer to process it. You'd see the little wheel spinning on the computer, and you'd be praying that the hard drive didn't crash and you didn't lose the performance.

Every band I knew or played with had flyers and properly-recorded demos and contacts; I couldn't even get a gig.

I know my own limitations. And if somebody says, "I need songs for a cartoon garage band - they look like this and they should sound like this," it gives you a direction. I like having that kind of assignment.

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.

My whole generation's mission is to kill the cliche...it's one of the reasons a lot of my generation are always on the fence about things. They're afraid to commit to anything for fear of seeming like a cliche. They're afraid to commit to their lives because they see so much of the world as a cliche.

I've said for years to wives and mothers, you must start to see yourself as Sarah Connor. You must equip your children with the information they need to survive an ever-changing world.

I never had any expectations of winning a Grammy. It wasn't something I was set on, that I was hoping and praying and starving for.

There's an infinite amount of possibilities and detours and things that can distract you from actually just performing the song and having whatever emotion that's invested into the song come through in the recording.

I didn't want to do something typical.

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.

Whether you're aware of it or not, any kind of collage idea becomes a part of how you see the world once you incorporate media and internet and video games and all these things.

I think my whole generation's mission is to kill the cliche.

I've personally reached the point where the sound of MP3s are so uncompelling, because so much is lost in translation.

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.

It gets a little bit troublesome when you have something that's overcompressed that shouldn't be.

I'm always working on my own music, too. I've been working on a record for a few years.

Somebody else is satisfied by five Bentleys. I'm satisfied by a beautiful string arrangement.

There's a perception that if an artist produces another artist, they're going to imprint on them. But I'm the opposite. I want to hear that artist; I don't want to hear me - that's the last thing I want to hear. 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.

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.

Sea Change was so specific. From the beginning it was set what it was going to be. All the other ideas that I had at the time I had to put to the side.

As music becomes more computer-based, it's lost some emotional impact.

I would love to do an electronic record. There's just so much to see and do and try. And life goes by.

Whatever you do has to be commercial and it can't be too distracting - it has to be background music, basically.

There are people who've prepared their whole lives for real heavy success and bask in it. They're so good at it and they obviously love it. I'm just happy to be making a record.

There's some quality you get when you're not totally comfortable.

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.

As society changes, as politics change, as people change, certain songs still seem to resonate.

I didn't even have a computer until like 10 years ago. I was still using a typewriter until 2002.

I think you have to keep a childlike quality to play music or make a record.