My Technology: Ben Folds

He had always prided himself on being a real acoustic musician - but then Folds discovered digital recording techniques. He talks to Jennifer Rodger

I have a line in the latest single, "Some producer with computers fixes all my shitty tracks". That's about when my producer, Ben Grosse, would point at a computer graph and say that a harmonica is sticking out of the bass drum in bar seven. And I would look at the graph, but after six hours of doing this I would feel as if I'd gone down a very dark tunnel.

I'm someone who prides himself on being able to play, and it drove me nuts when my producer would tell me that a sound was off. Does anyone really cares if you hear something that's a couple of milliseconds out of time? That's where a tug-of-war began, and it's why I think the record sounds as good as it does.

The computer experience has been very eye-opening, and made this record a big departure for me. Early on, I found that only using the computer effects sounded plastic, so I combined it with really old pre- amps made in late Sixties and early Seventies. They are gritty, distort more and have more edge, and that provides you with some sense of reality before it goes on the computer. The recording was then a combination of new and old.

Ultimately, I used the computer for its recording process more than the sound. For instance, while recording the album I also produced a small bit of Broadway scoring for a movie, and I had 20 actors singing who couldn't sing at all. I recorded all the actors, but I didn't have to record the singing with the music. I then took a computer and pasted their voices in the right spot and put them in tune and time. I made them all sound good, which was brilliant, because those actors couldn't sing.

A computer also helps you to capture a really candid performance, because while recording live I don't have to worry about editing choices. Afterwards, I can put on my thinking cap and throw around edits on the computer. In that way, you have all the spirit and fun that you intended.

Also, because I play every instrument on the album, I used the computer to create virtual musicians, which made it a little bit easier. However, you have to be careful about the 10,000 choices the computer allows, because there's more opportunity to mess it up. You can try to make it really perfect and ruin the vibe.

Once I discovered this editing freedom, it affected the way I write a song. Usually, a song can sound a little different when you perform it. If you were a band, you'd just go "one, two, three" and play it again, but when you're playing all the instruments and you've made that investment, then a change is a big deal. So in the middle of recording I could stop, and then edit it together later on the computer. This is cool, because making music is also about accidents. I could throw around edits haphazardly on the computer. There are no real rules.

The edits that I kept were often the ones I most haphazardly threw around. The single Rockin' in the Suburbs is the most edited thing I've ever heard in my life, but that was kind of the point of the song.

There are a lot of virtues to computerised recording. Anybody can do it, and it's like sticking a chord right into your brain. Eventually, though, I think that the computers are going to lead us down a really sad road.

I think being creative is nothing but collaborating with your circumstances: if you have two stones, you beat them together and that's your music. Maybe in your head you want two bananas, but you don't have them. The more you can simulate, the more choices are being made and the more people make choices based on just what they want.

I've heard a lot of people say they can't imagine going back now that they've got computers, and I have to say I don't care. I'm totally happy to record analogue or to do it on computer.

Ben Folds's album 'Rockin' the Suburbs' is out now on Epic