Adrian Holovaty interviewed by Denis Chang

BillDaCostaWilliams · April 23

djazzy · April 23

Adrian's a rebel! Its great to hear him to talk.

Buco · April 24

It was a nice conversation. That's a cool hack that Adrian explained about how he records rhythm track. I was talking to him at Django in June and I was telling him how I find it hard to get the rhythm guitar to groove in the pocket when I'm recording against the click. So he said: oh me too, what I do is I record a track just making sure it stays with the click as much as possible and then I turn off the click and record along with my scratch rhythm guitar. I was like, great hack, man!

I think his brilliance lies in him constantly asking himself "how can this be better?". And what he said, stuff that he personally found a need for. Like the Soundslice. All of the elements of Soundslice existed already. Now it seems so obvious that a tool like that would exist but a few years back nobody was putting two and two together until Adrian did.

billyshakes · April 24

I remember reading interviews with various thrash metal bands in the mid- to late-80s asking if songs/albums were recorded to a click. (Specifically I remember this conversation with Testament's "Practice What You Preach" and possibly Queensryche's "Operation: Mindcrime.") Just the fact that they were asking those questions makes me think that practice was somewhat new rather than established dominant practice. Also would coincide with CDs and digital recording.

When I hear stories of Jeff Porcaro salvaging the 1st gen "Beat It" tapes that EVH cut, he listened to bleed through and created his own version of a click track to then allow the rest of the rhythm section parts to match the vocal and the guitar solo. (Here's a short version of Luke telling the story, there are longer versions out there). So I think that scratch rhythm or skeleton drum track was more a 70s thing that has been lost due to ProTools, snapping to grid in a DAW, and just the general digital recording revolution. It is an organic, analog practice that I think is still perfect for a swing music style where feel is more important than perfections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGxr6L8a1GE