I'm not going for a soft sound. I ain't lookin' for a warm sound. My sound is warm, but I don't need tubes to do it. The Randall RG-100 is the best amp for what I do.
Now, what happens whenever there's a loud sound is that it startles us, right? And we arrest what we're doing, and we try to localize that sound because that sound could be a threat. That's something that's hard-wired in our bodies.
Sound should bring you in. We have people in all these specialized departments to make it one whole. They are supposed to work together to bring us into their world, not push us away. For example, rock music has to be loud, but it doesn't have to be too loud.
The frequencies of the notes in a scale—do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do—sound to us like they’re rising in equal steps. But objectively their vibrational frequencies are rising by equal multiples. We perceive pitch logarithmically.
If you look at a record under a microscope, the high frequencies are short jagged edges... and the low frequencies are long swinging ones are deep bass sounds. When it cut it at half speed, you're getting more of those on the record.
I just enjoy the sound as I hear it in everything around me. The high and low frequencies of sound bewitch me. Whether I am in a shop, in the bathroom or listening to noise that my fans make... everything is music to my ears and drives me. I just put all these things in rhythm when I'm playing.
I often use a return channel to get some shape out of the bass. It's a good way to split the frequencies of the bass so that the sub bass is clean and in mono and the higher end of the bass sound can be filtered off - have it on an audio channel and that's where you can use effects.
We constantly try to change and stay fresh. We've done a lot of different styles of music: R&B, hip-hop, rock, orchestral. So when people hear us doing a rock'n'roll record or a movie like "Dreamgirls," they'll say, "Hey, that doesn't sound like an Underdogs sound."
...I do like the low frequencies. It's from years and years of observing audiences when they hear a lower frequency coming from an instrument it tends to pull them in. You have to listen a little more attentively. High frequency instruments hit you so hard, after a while the ear has a tendency to want to shut down. And that's what happens. I've been able to observe very carefully how people tend to get very tired of listening to high frequencies a lot.
If you try to do a genuine rock musical, rock people will think you're flaccid and Broadway audiences will think you're too loud.
When a human being without amplification makes a sound that is high and loud, it is almost unworldly.
I think the best advice I give is to try not to write. Try not to overwrite, try not to make it sound too good. Just use your own voice. Use your own style of putting it down.
The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous.
I use a progressive alarm that makes a soft sound at first and then progressively gets louder. But I usually wake on the first sound, so it doesn't disturb my wife. When I used a loud alarm clock, I was more likely to hit it on the head and go back to sleep.
There were not very many girls in rock n' roll together with men that had a heavy rock sound as well as a more acoustic sound like Heart.
People say I play real loud. I don't, actually. I'm recorded loud and a lot of that is because we have good engineers. Mick knows what a good drum sound is as well, so that's part of the illusion really. I can't play loud.