As a studio, you have to have a niche. You have to provide a service and there has to be a reason for your being around.

In fact, it's in my interest to love digital recording, and I just spent a ton on a new digital recording system, so I speak from a place of heavy investment in both sides.

When I tour with a band, things get more unconscious and more automatic as the tour goes on. Music has to be like natural speech. It's probably like learning a foreign language. Thinking about the use of pronouns is not the passionate part of communicating with people.

Making love to robots will probably be great one day. It's just not a viable option right now.

I was living in Gainesville, Florida, and our babysitter brought over the soundtrack to The Who's "Tommy" - not the actual record "Tommy", but the soundtrack to the movie with Elton John and Aretha Franklin. I remember hearing it for the first time and it was so confusing. It was like waves and waves of unknowable and indescribable sound coming out of the stereo.

One day, digital will be it. Analog will just be another oddity, and that's fine, too. I have no great misgivings about it, but there will always be something to analog. It's the smell of the tape and all that visceral, physical stuff.

As a studio, you have to have a niche. You have to provide a service and there has to be a reason for your being around.