A Quote by Mike Portnoy
There's the drums, the music, the melodies, the lyrics, the production, the artwork: there are so many elements to making an album, and the drumming is just a very small fraction of what I focus on.
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I play drums and guitar. My best instrument is definitely drums, so I'm featured a lot on the album drumming. It's pretty futuristic as well.
The only criticism heard with any frequency of Elton John's first American album, 'Elton John,' was that the production was too grandiose. The melodies were superb, and lyrics frequently very good, and the performances flawless.
In any series of elements to be controlled, a selected small fraction, in terms of numbers of elements, always accounts for a large fraction in terms of effect.
Whenever I work on an album and the time comes to do all the artwork, the only thing I think of is the LP artwork. When we worked on the 'Electric Trim' artwork, we spent weeks and weeks making the LP artwork great, and then the CD artwork came together in a day or two. The LP is what's important to me.
We start a lot with melodies and instrumentation and trying to figure out good melodies for verses and choruses. We get to lyrics sometimes second, so we'll start humming a melody, finding something, and see where the music takes you as far as lyrics are and what you want to say and go from there.
I told myself I'd do well by using the experience I gained during my seven years as Big Bang. In my mind, the executive producer is the person that is in charge of everything up to the point that the album comes out. So not just the music but also the music video, album artwork, photographs, and even the material the album itself would be made out of.
There's generally no good reason why others should care about most of any one artist's work. The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars.
The records I make, I'm there from the writing of the first note through the click tracks to the miking of the drums to the editing of everything to the production to the vocals to the artwork.
With this new album, I prepared for it a long time, and I was happy with the songs and the production. I felt that I proved myself with the first album, and with this new album, I just want to share some of my music. And that was always my feeling and my intention.
The dilemma of the eighth-grade dance is that boys and girls use music in different ways. Girls enjoy music they can dance to, music with strong vocals and catchy melodies. Boys, on the other hand, enjoy music they can improve by making up filthy new lyrics.
Jim had melodies as well as words. He didn't know how to play a chord on any instrument, but he had melodies in his head. To remember the lyrics he would think of melodies and then they would stay in his head. He had melodies and lyrics in his head, and he would sing them a cappella, and we would eke out the arrangements.
Everything is important to me... Forgetting the small details is not wise when you care so much about your music and band. So, I try to put effort and focus into the artwork as well, so it best represents the music that I've put my heart and soul into.
People don't go to the record store anymore. It's crazy. The culture used to be so much stronger. People would go and support you, and go pick up the album. Not just for the music, but for the liner notes, for the artwork, just for the whole thing and to have it, and be able to say, 'I have this album.'
I wish I could free myself from making music that has a dancefloor-function, or at least try to focus more on all the other elements in music.
The collectability of music is something lost in the age of MP3s and album downloads. Holding an album in your hands and having the full-sized artwork reconnects the artist and the listener.
I learned a lot from working with and watching Knxwledge, seeing how he produces non-stop. He doesn't dwell too long on stuff. He's very simple, using only about two or three elements. I like that in production. Sometimes it doesn't take more than three drums, a melody, the vocal, looping a sample or whatever, just as minimal as possible.
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