This advice holds up...

I watched Showtime's The History of The Eagles documentary last night, and my favorite part was when Don Henley talked about wanting his bass drum to sound "louder" on the record and his producer (who had worked with Led Zeppelin and The Who) told him that if he wanted it louder, he should hit it harder. That's some of the best advice I've ever heard. It pertains to just. about. anything. Henley hit it harder, but even he admitted he could never hit it as hard as John Bonham could.

We spend too much time these days expecting to just make adjustments after the fact. In present day recording studios, that's so true, it's scary. You want those drums louder, just turn up the levels before the track hits the iTunes "shelves." Back in the day, you had to actually bang the drum harder.

We cut too many corners these days.

In music, nothing replaces the sound of hard work.

If you want it louder, hit it harder.

The second best interview in the film was when Joe Walsh was asked about perspective, and about looking back on his life, and he said this:

I found when you’re living your life it seems like random events mashing into each other like a huge car accident and that mutates into something else and you have no idea what’s going on. And then something smashes into that and then it’s anarchy and chaos and, ‘I don’t know what’s going on!’ as you live it. After the fact is when you get your perspective, when you look back upon it and it’s kinda, ‘Ahhh… I see!’ It’s like someone wrote a finely crafted novel; it all finally makes sense looking back at it but at the time I was so into it, it was like being in an air raid [laughs]! Bombs were dropping everywhere and I didn’t have an idea!

From air raid sirens to finely crafted novel. That's the goal...

That, and trying to remember to beat the hell out of that proverbial drum.