Recording
According to Cat Power: A Good Woman by Elizabeth Goodman, You Are Free represents the longest Marshall had spent recording an album at that point. Marshall and engineer Adam Kasper recorded about 40 songs over the course of a year, of which 14 were included on the album.
In a 2003 interview with Pitchfork, Marshall explained the album was recorded "Sporadically. While I was traveling...Adam was working on other things, and I worked on his schedule. He'd get these really nice studios, and when he had off time we'd go in and then try to remember what we did like two months ago and pull that tape up. I'd be like, 'Uh, no, I wanna do something new,' and then I'd write a new song. So it basically worked like that-- every few months getting together and essentially writing new songs." According to Marshall, Kasper helped her decide which of the 40 songs they recorded should make it onto the album.
Marshall revealed that she chose Kasper because "I was looking for somebody who would let me do what I wanted to do, who's a really good engineer," and said that she saw him as an engineer, rather than a producer.
Numerous songs on the album are performed solo, with only Marshall on vocals and guitar or piano. Grohl plays drums on the songs "Speak For Me," "He War" and "Shaking Paper," and plays bass on "Shaking Paper." Vedder provides backing vocals on "Good Woman" and "Evolution," while Ellis plays violin on "Werewolf."
The songs "Good Woman" and "Werewolf" feature string arrangements by David Campbell, which were recorded after Marshall's vocals had been completed, at the Boat Studio in Los Angeles, California.
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Famous quotes containing the word recording:
“I didn’t have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let’s say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“Too many photographers try too hard. They try to lift photography into the realm of Art, because they have an inferiority complex about their Craft. You and I would see more interesting photography if they would stop worrying, and instead, apply horse-sense to the problem of recording the look and feel of their own era.”
—Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870–1942)
“Write while the heat is in you.... The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)