Growing up surrounded by the Bay Area’s rich mix of hip-hop, pop punk, funk, and soul, a door opened for producer Ricky Reed when one of his productions found its way to Jason Derulo and...
Aaron Dessner, along with his twin brother Bryce, make up two-fifths of the group The National. I interviewed Aaron and Bryce for Tape Op online (#133) about the making of The National’s 2019...
Last fall, I had the pleasure of meeting up and chatting with two successful Hollywood film composers (Charlie Clouser & Lyle Workman), each in their respective home studios. Interestingly,...
Last fall, I had the pleasure of meeting up and chatting with two successful Hollywood film composers (Charlie Clouser & Lyle Workman), each in their respective home studios. Interestingly, what...
The production of today’s singer/songwriter projects is going through a major renaissance, and Ethan Gruska is at the forefront of these new sounds. At only 30 years old, he has already put...
Laraaji (born as Edward Larry Gordon) may be most well-known for his 1980 album Ambient 3: Day of Radiance, a collaboration with Brian Eno for his legendary ambient series of recordings, but...
As we move through life we learn different things from different people, many of which are formative. From my father, I learned the value of a good work ethic and doing what you say you’ll do,...
With the recent releases of M1 MacBook laptops and the M1 Mac mini desktop, Apple has finally begun an all-encompassing transition to its own ARM64 CPUs. In response, I’ve had a number of...
As we watch technology change and the world shift around us, one aspect of making music appears to be moving in a very obvious way; the writing and recording of music is becoming one in the same. Many...
Aaron Dessner, along with his twin brother Bryce, make up two-fifths of the group The National. I interviewed Aaron and Bryce for Tape Op online (#133) about the making of The National’s 2019...
Growing up surrounded by the Bay Area’s rich mix of hip-hop, pop punk, funk, and soul, a door opened for producer Ricky Reed when one of his productions found its way to Jason Derulo and...
Last fall, I had the pleasure of meeting up and chatting with two successful Hollywood film composers (Charlie Clouser & Lyle Workman), each in their respective home studios. Interestingly,...
Last fall, I had the pleasure of meeting up and chatting with two successful Hollywood film composers (Charlie Clouser & Lyle Workman), each in their respective home studios. Interestingly, what...
The production of today’s singer/songwriter projects is going through a major renaissance, and Ethan Gruska is at the forefront of these new sounds. At only 30 years old, he has already put...
Laraaji (born as Edward Larry Gordon) may be most well-known for his 1980 album Ambient 3: Day of Radiance, a collaboration with Brian Eno for his legendary ambient series of recordings, but...
A drummer turned mastering engineer, Piper Payne is a Bay Area audio professional who I’ve long admired. She has worked with the likes of The Go-Go’s, Shannon & the Clams, Third Eye...
While hardly a glamorous concept, room acoustics represent a critical link in the recording or playback chain. While comprehensive room design is a complex cocktail of science, math and chance...
I have been a big fan of spring and plate reverbs for decades, and over the past three years I have spent a significant amount of time diving into the wormhole of designing and building them,...
In the disembodied world of today's computer-based multitrack mixing, one can spend a lot of time crafting a unifying sense of "space." Despite the dozens of reverb plug-ins and rack devices...
Here's a ridiculously cheap and simple way to make a pretty nice microphone shock mount. Cost is under 10 bucks (way under if you build more than one) and it shouldn't take too much more than a half...
With news of Neil Young pushing to get studio quality audio out to the consumer, it occurred to me that it would be good to get some perspective on how we go about comparing audio quality. One of the most problematic issues surrounding audio...
Everyone has been talking about Dave Grohl's new documentary Sound City a lot lately. That's cool; it's a fun romp of a movie, even if Dave can't decide whether he's making a film about a Neve console, a dying studio, a rock star jam session or an...
Expect to see more changes in the music purchasing/acquiring habits of teenagers as time goes by. Courtesy of the NPD Group's press release: "teens (age 13 to 17) acquired 19 percent less music in 2008 than they did in 2007. CD purchasing declined 26...
In a fascinating and really open Facebook debate initiated by fellow producer, cycling enthuiasist, and coffee-drinking pal, Eric Ambel (www.ericambel.com), I was alerted to what was finally a clear insight into how and why Spotify could possibly...
I'm about to write something that at first will seem like another gray-beard waxing nostalgic for a by-gone analog era. But, stick with me, because I think the tables are turning to where going analog might be as forward-thinking as it gets. Let's...
Over the last few years we've seen an explosion of online music services. Pandora, iTunes, Spotify, Rhapsody, Soundcloud and dozens of other platforms are touted as groundbreaking ways to deliver music to listeners. But this success is on the...
Richard Kaplan, owner engineer of famed recording studio Indigo Ranch [Tape Op #103] is selling the remainder of his classic equipment collection. It includes vintage and rare pieces by API, Aengus, Fairchild, Teletronix, Neumann and...
Wall Street PR reports on the woes of Avid, the company behind Pro Tools. What does the future hold? I'm just terrified of having to learn a new platform, buying more gear and software, and there not being a de facto DAW standard for professional...
A reader just informed me that APPLE's recent Logic Pro X includes "Drummer", a virtual drummer plug-in. One of the virtual drummers is named "aidan", who apparently cannot find the CAPS key on his virtual MacBook. In Aidan's "Portland Kit" we...
Subconscious Auditory Effects (SAE) is a term I have cobbled together to encapsulate a broad range of phenomena in this barely-studied field of inquiry. An SAE is any measurable effect on a person caused by a sound, or change in sound, that is...
