Jack White really is the hardest working man in show business. Not content with busying himself with the imminent release of The Dead Weather's rather excellent debut LP Horehound and a host of production duties and guest appearances, White apparently plans to start work on a solo album this year.
Speaking to Music Connection, White also had plenty to say about the modern reliance on Pro Tools in the recording environment:
"I think Pro Tools is highly inappropriate to record music. I think it should be used in films or on documentaries. I think for recording music and wanting it to be soulful it's just the biggest mistake you can make.
"It's too easy to correct mistakes, it's too easy to fix things. We hear this sort of clean, plastic perfection that's been applied to all the tracks. That is not the kind of music we grew up loving and listening to and wanting to be a part of. It becomes regimented and exactly, perfectly in time and perfectly in tune, and that just doesn't exist in the real world."
"I think Pro Tools is highly inappropriate to record music." Jack White
Asked if he had any advice for aspiring musicians, White remarked: "Get away from Pro Tools. Get away from sounding like everybody else. Get away from trying to find the right mathematical equation that will get your song on the radio.
"If the songs aren't pure to begin with and they can't make it by being recorded on a 4-track, then they shouldn't be there in the first place. And it's gonna end up being the same plastic, churned out, assembly line kind of music."
Here's White's new band The Dead Weather, recorded on 2" eight-track at 7.5" per second:
