Jamaican electronics whiz kid Hopeton Overton Brown got his moniker "Scientist" from none other than one of dub music production's founding fathers, King Tubby (Osbourne Ruddock). As a teenager he...
Art is Alive is a solidarity effort aimed at providing resources, spreading awareness and building connectedness within the artistic and creative freelance communities impacted by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Created by artist Rhiannon Giddens, and...
So, let me begin by saying that I sincerely hope I’m overreacting and that I can laugh about this in a few months. But on the off chance I’m not overreacting, here’s the story of how and why I sacrificed my vintage Tape Op...
As one half of The Black Keys with Dan Auerbach [Tape Op #127], Patrick Carney has witnessed their band achieve the sort of commercial success they would have once considered impossible. But more than...
I remember the first time I heard the Dub Syndicate album, Tunesfrom the Missing Channel, in 1984. I was used to reggae being somethingearthy and warm, but here was a record that sizzled and popped...
Co-founded by Emch in 1999, Subatomic Sound System is a collective of musicians and others with a focus on combining the new and old technologies of music, as inspired by Jamaican dub studio work...
Art is Alive is a solidarity effort aimed at providing resources, spreading awareness and building connectedness within the artistic and creative freelance communities impacted by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Created by artist Rhiannon Giddens, and...
Amidst all the bad news and chaos in the world, there are a few silver linings. One of them is having a bit of extra time for listening. Whether it's while you are working from home, maniacally crafting or cooking that 57th batch of cookies, it...
So, let me begin by saying that I sincerely hope I’m overreacting and that I can laugh about this in a few months. But on the off chance I’m not overreacting, here’s the story of how and why I sacrificed my vintage Tape Op...
Lee "Scratch" Perry The Crocodile, Seattle, WA, 2019. by GS. Our heroes are flawed. Our gods will let us down. But there is no substitute for music that resonates with the soul when the listener...
In 2014, I wrote about Li-ion batteries and brushless motors revolutionizing the cordless power tool industry, and I mentioned a few of my favorite tools from Bosch, Ryobi, and Milwaukee [Tape Op...
Dub. Even the word is a technical term from the studio, making a copy of a recording to another media. But what do we mean when we talk about dub music? Musique concrète, later works by The...
This book, subtitled Stompbox Effects for Creative Music Making, is a welcome guide to how the conversation around instrument pedals and recording has evolved over the past few years, especially with...
A huge part of Eventide's identity lies in their lineage in modern recorded music and the resulting imprint these contributions have left on the landscape of record making. Imagine your record...
Described as a "Dynamic Stereo Width Maximizer," SideMinder was developed by Jeff Rippe, former president and chief engineer of Rocksonics, and current mixing and mastering engineer at Raising Jake...
Andrew Roberts started Purple Audio and came out with the MC76 limiting amplifier in 1997. Informed by Andrew's years as a tech, the MC76 implemented the classic UREI 1176 Revision E compression...
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...
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...
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...
