Anthrax, Testament, Overkill, Stormtroopers of Death, Nuclear Assault, Vio-lence... Alex Perialas is responsible for dozens of classic metal records from the '80s and '90s, mostly made in his studio,...
Kevin Army was a secret force behind the East Bay punk explosion of the late '80s and early '90s. Being a generation older than the bands he worked with brought depth and wisdom on two-fronts that...
Laurie Nelson Roll up your sleeves, make a mess, get dirty, get fired, get re-hired, tear it down, and build it all back up again. Then make it better than it was before. That could be a...
Musician, songwriter, producer, and entertainment lawyer "Boogie" Bob Baldori has performed everywhere from Moscow to the Midwest for the past 40 years, and has called Lansing, Michigan home for most...
I met Enrique Tena Padilla when he, along with Eric Bauer, engineered, produced, and mixed the last two Oh Sees records (Orc and Smote Reverser) at Sonic Ranch [Tape Op #94], outside of El Paso,...
Her bio states, "SassyBlack is a space aged singer, songwriter & producer," and that is a great starting point in digging into her career, one that also includes the titles of freelance writer,...
It wasn’t that long ago that when you went into the studio you basically disappeared from the rest of the world into a place with few (or no) windows, and low light. Where time seemed to have a way of getting distorted, finding yourself rolling...
Justin Douglas of King Electric Recording in Austin, Texas compiled some good thoughts on all the stuff nobody likes to talk about but really, really should! Check it out here:Studio Etiquette: Everything Your Engineer Wants You To Know But Is...
Audio engineers are translators. We translate ideas into sounds. Creative descriptions into technical decisions. Drunken late-night texts into mix revisions. That’s the secret to this job: we...
Tape Op contributor Thom Monahan dug up this gem. Enjoy!
On November 9-11, 2018, Ableton held their Loop 2018 conference in Hollywood, CA. Thom Monahan and I both went to check it out. Here’s some of what we experienced, starting with Thom. -JB It’s hard to imagine a music software company...
For almost two decades now, a crucial component of my cross-platform file-sharing and backup strategies in my home and personal studio has been Network Attached Storage (NAS). My first NAS appliance...
Is there a fine line between naive encouragement and pessimistic, dour warnings of possible failure? (i.e. "Just do it! DIY!" vs. "Give up. It's impossible.") Over twenty years ago I was making plans...
A songwriter recently asked me to advise him on what type of recording equipment he should buy. He was looking for "a decent interface and a program… that won't make my demos sound like shit,...
Laurie Nelson Roll up your sleeves, make a mess, get dirty, get fired, get re-hired, tear it down, and build it all back up again. Then make it better than it was before. That could be a...
Kevin Army was a secret force behind the East Bay punk explosion of the late '80s and early '90s. Being a generation older than the bands he worked with brought depth and wisdom on two-fronts that...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Carol Kaye is one of the most recorded bass players of all time, with 10,000 sessions and 40,000 songs under her belt, including a staggering list of hits for Ray Charles, The Righteous Brothers,...
