Brian Lucey on positive compromise

“I forget who first phrased this concept, might have been Bob Olsen,” said Lucey. “Everywhere in the production process, there’s some harm introduced to the audio. The goal is to gain more than you lose at every step.

“This might make me sound crazy, but I believe all the potential music in the world exists somewhere in this place of silence. And the artist hears and draws something from that silence and gives it a voice. At first it’s kind of raw, it might be a hook or a verse line, but it has potential.

“Then the next step is arrangement; they take that inspiration and structure it in a way that connects with more people without losing the original inspirational intent. That original rawness is lost to some extent, but they’ve arranged it in a way where you or I might get what they mean.

“You go in the studio. Let’s say it’s the new U2 record and they want to record live because they can. The result is never as cool as being in the room, something was lost, but something was gained because now we have a recording.

“To me there are six steps: Inspiration, arrangement, performance in the recording studio, tracking engineer, mixing engineer, mastering engineer. If you have a positive compromise at each step, it can be an amazing record.”