Is it harder getting guitar tones or drum sounds in the studio?
I’m pretty laid back about recording guitar. I get a good amp, find a decent sound, put up a decent microphone, and I’m halfway there. It’s pretty easy to translate a good guitar sound to tape. I had more problems getting great drum sounds because of the resonances and rings. How has your approach to recording guitars changed since the Foo Fighters’ first album? On the self-titled first album, we didn’t do more than two takes for anything! Things went the opposite direction on The Colour and the Shape because we tried to lock in all the guitar parts as tight as we could. On Nothing Left, we kind of returned to the spirit of the first record, and a lot of the scratch-guitar parts wound up on the final mixes. It just sounded fuller when there were lots of little imperfections going on here and there — pick scratches and things like the guitar on the left channel being a little lazier than the one on the right. Was it difficult shifting gears from the freer process of the first album to
