bLoGgY bLoG

PM: A while back, I interviewed Death Cab for Cutie guitarist/producer Chris Walla about production, and he made an interesting point. He notes how a lot of younger bands would sometimes come up to him and perform a mediocre take and then just tell him to go and “fix it” in the studio, what with his digital studio trickery and whatnot. He called this succumbing to the monster of “good enough”. With the proliferation of audio software out there today and the rise of digital recording, has this been a part of your production experience as well?

BW: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. That’s why it saddens me that the industry has gotten so far from signing a talented band [and] instead worries about a cute kind in a haircut that little girls like. I mean, that’s understandable, but let’s be honest: when I was 14, I didn’t have the best taste in music, [but] that’s not to say that I didn’t love stuff that was on the radio—I did! I just think those records—even the poppiest of pop records—were all played by really amazing musicians. Even if they weren’t in the band, they were really amazing studio musicians. Even if it’s a pop singer, the musicianship was through the roof, and that kind of thing inspired me to do good.

Also, the limitations of not having technology on my side [when I was] growing up recording—I wasn’t able to really have those questions of tuning fixing and timing fixing, shit like that. So it really sucks now because I’ll record younger bands and they’ll be completely fine with singing a really shitty out-of-tune vocal thing and just expect that I’m going to fix it.