With the recent release of the documentary Herb Alpert Is... the world got a glimpse into the life of a man with many accomplishments. Sure, most know him for Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass,...
Chris Hillman has spent the last 60 years making more music and conquering more sonic territory than most. Being a founding member of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers would be enough for...
Jason Carmer's name kept coming up, so when our ad rep, Marsha Vdovin, told me he was sheltering in place in nearby Sonoma County, it seemed to be the right time to do a socially distanced interview...
As a seasoned professional producer, mixer, and engineer, Toronto-based Richard Chycki has worked with a vast array of musical artists, such as Rush, Dream Theater, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, and Jeff...
In May of 2008 I was sitting outside a London pub with Paul Butler [Tape Op #75], Phill Brown [#12, Are We Still Rolling?], and John Baccigaluppi talking shop. Paul had begun working on what would...
At 29, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Sarah Jarosz has already had a lifetime's worth of musical accomplishments. Signing her first deal at 16 with Sugar Hill Records, she has since released...
As a music recording magazine, certainly one of the aspects of what we do involves recommending and mentioning the tools used in our craft. The variety of recording equipment and range of cost has...
One of the biggest weak spots in every recording chain is usually right in front of you, and it's a very obvious one – once you think about it. How are you monitoring the audio that you're...
During this pandemic, I've been listening to a lot more podcasts than in the past — whether I want to catch up on news, learn something new, or simply be entertained. As with anything online,...
A few months back while on a call with Tape Op publisher John Baccigaluppi, he mentioned that he was working on an album project where the majority of the sounds were generated by his cat Raspy. That is not to say that Raspy actually sat down...
With the recent release of the documentary Herb Alpert Is... the world got a glimpse into the life of a man with many accomplishments. Sure, most know him for Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass,...
Chris Hillman has spent the last 60 years making more music and conquering more sonic territory than most. Being a founding member of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers would be enough for...
Jason Carmer's name kept coming up, so when our ad rep, Marsha Vdovin, told me he was sheltering in place in nearby Sonoma County, it seemed to be the right time to do a socially distanced interview...
As a seasoned professional producer, mixer, and engineer, Toronto-based Richard Chycki has worked with a vast array of musical artists, such as Rush, Dream Theater, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, and Jeff...
In May of 2008 I was sitting outside a London pub with Paul Butler [Tape Op #75], Phill Brown [#12, Are We Still Rolling?], and John Baccigaluppi talking shop. Paul had begun working on what would...
At 29, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Sarah Jarosz has already had a lifetime's worth of musical accomplishments. Signing her first deal at 16 with Sugar Hill Records, she has since released...
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...
