chris cornell discusses songwriting and recording new record

by dan agosto, gearwire.com, april 2007

Besides having one of the most rock'n'roll voices of all time, Chris Cornell is a very prolific songwriter. Having written many hits for his bands Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog, and Audioslave, he has his method down pat. One may be surprised with the tools that an artist of such stature uses when getting ideas out. For him a very simple straightforward approach is best. Chris was nice enough to take a moment and speak with me about writing and recording his second solo record Carry On.

Daniel Agosto: Most of our readers are musicians and they're very interested in the types of tools that other musicians use to get the job done.

Chris Cornell: Oh OK. (laughs) Mine are pretty simple and pretty specific nowadays. I make really elaborate demos for my records and I make them pretty simply and I don't spend a lot of money doing it. My song writing and demo studio is either my spare bedroom at our house in Los Angeles or our spare bedroom in our apartment in Paris. So everything is guitar and bass played through pods and I record it into Korg D120's. In Los Angeles I record keyboard with a Korg Triton.

With the new album Carry On was the song writing process any different from previous projects?

I suppose not really just the fact that I'm writing totally alone is different. There is a certain amount of free form and stream of consciousness that'll happen because I don't have to communicate with anybody at all. I don't have to not say something when I wanna say something could be changed for the better or be different. I think in a band situation there is a lot of give and take. With writing alone there isn't and the process is sort of combined with the demoing process. As soon as I have an idea I record it. If you're writing songs with a band inside a room you're hearing it played back to you as you stand there, with your ears, in a three dimensional world. That's informative. Writing songs alone all the ideas go immediately to the hard drive and that's how I respond to it and bring it into the three dimensional world. Then I can sort of make decisions. That all goes pretty fast for me at this point in my life.

Is there any particular reason that you use the Korg D1200, which is a stand alone hard drive recorder, other than something like ProTools or Cubase?

It's simple, it was an $800 box that I learned how to use in a day, and I'm making demos. I think that there's magic and inspiration in a song. If I were in a studio and trying to make an album for people to hear I certainly would not make these choices as far as equipment. A Korg D1200 it's just very quick and easy for me. It might be just as easy to use another system but that was just what I picked up and used.

At what point did you start using the D1200?

A few years ago. Probably 3 or 4 years ago on the road for Audioslave.

What were you using before that?

Well before that it was a pretty big leap backwards were I was using ADAT's and a big analog board and a lot of outboard gear.

Do you still use any outboard gear?

No. When I'm sitting in a room demoing songs outboard gear is something that corrupts my mind. You know, I'm not a gear-head. I'm not into it in that particular mode. I'm worried about the expression of the song. I work pretty quickly and I can get what I want out of the tools that I have regardless of what those tools are. Getting preoccupied with the tools I think is kind of a mistake. When it comes to making records, that's a different story. I kind of like the division between the two. I like to get the expression out in the lo-fi simple world and then worry about really actualizing the sounds later.

Is there any particular mic that you like to use when you're demoing songs that makes your life a little easier?

An SM7 is what I use now and in terms of the demo world it's pretty user friendly. You can do pretty much anything you want with it. I usually put the low pad on and then boost the midrange, which is on the mic. If I want to get different sounds, or thinner, lo-fi or radio sounds I just grab it in different ways and actually kind of mold the sound with my hand over the mic and it always works. It hits compression really well. It's not the best thing for a big warm vocal when it comes to more open ambient songs, but as far as a great utility mic it's my favorite.

How was working with Steve Lillywhite on the new album?

It was great! We recorded everything onto a hard drive through ProTools. We had a Neve board. He's just sort of old school in terms of being a mix engineer. We just put everything that was recorded up through faders and then cataloged other tracks in ProTools but we really approached it as though it was being recorded onto tape. For me the difference in that type of recording versus old school analog is simply time. I don't think there are any ideas that I every had recording onto 2" 24-track that I wasn't able to create, it was just the amount of time spent doing it. Steve is somebody who is not really a purist. He's able to go between the old world and the new world pretty seamlessly and get the most out of it. He's not afraid to use plug-ins to make a sound that you would have figured out another way to make in the past. In that way I think we got along great because I'm not a purist in any sense. I believe that your ears are responsible for all of what comes out as far as sound, nothing else. In the digital age you can make anything sound like anything. I don't believe there are shortcuts though. There are plug-ins that say this is a mic simulator, this is an amp simulator, this is gonna simulate this mic going into this compression and it's gonna make it sound like that. I don't think any of these things work. I think you have to get in literally with your own ear and adjust to make it sound the way you want it to sound. I definitely believe in that. You know, I've heard records that were recorded digitally that people would have put their hand in the fire to disagree. They're totally wrong and what it has to do with is the ears that are doing the recording. So I worked really well with Steve on that level.

Gary Lucas played on the new record. How was working with him?

It was really an exciting experience. It was supposed to be three days and I think it became more like five days. We had just finished base tracks for the whole record and thought it would be good to bring him in. I just wanted to hear what he might add to some of the songs. I don't even know if we were considering using him on everything but he did play on pretty close to everything. He really didn't know the songs, he was very quiet, soft spoken guy. He sat down and hooked up his gear. He had a lot of stuff going on. A lot of old pedals and things, I didn't even know what they were. There were a lot of different guitars with interesting tunings. And then he just went off, I mean he was like a barely restrained extremely emotive expressive player. It was really impressive. Actually, there were times when it really reminded me of working with Kim in Soundgarden when it came to his solos. It was just really super expressive, really emotional, not necessarily ever repeatable. You couldn't really say "That was great! Just do it again because the sound wasn't quite right." There was one spot that he decided he wanted to double. The passage was so out there that it was really hard for him to do it again. I just love that kind of guitar playing, just digging in and pure emotion coming out. He was ferocious as a player and he was the most soft spoken guy and barely even spoke when he wasn't playing. There's something about that that is so interesting to me when someone has learned how to communicate in a way that most people would think is totally unconventional or not even understand.

Did you bring any of your own gear into the studio?

I really didn't bring much of anything in. I would occasionally bring in guitars or an amp, whatever I thought would do the best job. I played through pretty simple stuff, Voxes and Fender amps. I tend to keep it pretty simple. My favorite guitar is one that a friend of mine, Billy Stapleton from Seattle, initially put together. It's a reproduction of Neal Young's number one guitar. He studied a lot trying to get it exactly right. Then we had a tech that was Neil Young's guitar tech and he kinda did the finishing touches on it. It wasn't really to make it sound like Neil Young but I think it's one of those situations where this is a guitar that you can plug into anything and it has a really satisfying, rattley, rock'n'roll sound. I use that one more than anything else.

Reprinted from Gearwire.com. Originally available as an online feature here.

Chris Cornell Fan Page © Clare O'Brien 2007