Detroit guitarist and producer Jack White has ranted in a new interview about the failings of modern recording techniques.
Digital production has changed the way music sounds. Giving producers more accuracy, it has also given rise to the feeling amongst some fans that a lot of the warmth and humanity that makes music so wonderful has been lost.
Jack White is a firm critic of digital production. The guitarist produced the seminal ‘Sympathetic Sounds Of Detroit’ compilation in his own house, using a series of mics and very basic equipment to capture a flavour of the scene.
Since then the guitarist has moved on, achieving stardom with The White Stripes and then The Raconteurs. Returning with The Dead Weather this year, Jack White recorded the band himself in his own studio.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 the guitarist turned producer slated modern recording techniques. On his own recording style Jack White said: “A lot of it starts with live music which is pretty rare these days”.
“People don’t record live any more but the studio I set is designed to record live the studio I designed is set up to generate that kind of music where we don’t record on Protools so we don’t spend two months clicking a mouse and fine tuning everything.”
“Its just a way of getting something realistic on tape something soulful and beautiful it’s the kind of music we’re all inspired by and its like our sound we would want people to hear us in that fashion – not chopped up in a kind of pro tools kind of way.”
Asked about modern production, Jack White compared digital technology to photography. “I don’t think real film real photography has a real quality that’s soulful and realistic. Anyone whose handed a real photograph rather than a digital one would prefer the real one you want something that really occurred you know that’s beautful”.
The Dead Weather are set to play a free entry show in London tomorrow (October 31st).