Chip was one of the best and hardest-working session guitar pickers/ producer/engineers that Nashville has ever seen. But he was even better at being a granddad, family man, and a Christian. Nashville...
As far as I can reckon, albums that Michael Wagener has produced, engineered, or mixed – including Mötley Crüe's Too Fast for Love, Skid Row's Skid Row, Metallica's Master of Puppets,...
In 2011 an artist by the name of Gotye rose to international prominence on the back of his song, "Somebody That I Used to Know," from his third album, Making Mirrors. Wouter "Wally" De Backer is...
German composer and performance artist Christina Kubisch has created electronic and acoustic music for installations since the '70s. Her work focuses on finding sounds where no one expects, and her...
Dan Molad may be best known as part of the band Lucius, or for his current solo release as CHIMNEY, but he's also been involved as a producer, collaborator, and musician with a lot of interesting...
Technician, musician, and recordist Stephen Masucci has been a friend of Tape Op for many years, helping set up interviews and turning us on to some great people. His band, The Lost Patrol, has been a...
In 2012, I wrote about the P-touch PT-1290 label maker in “Gear Geeking” [Tape Op #90]. I've printed countless self-stick labels with the P-touch, using its mini QWERTY keyboard and...
After 32 years of attending, visiting, and helming many studio recordings, I've come to recognize the impact that guests dropping by can have on a session. In Tape Op #73 I described my take on...
Sometimes I feel like maybe I've faked my way into the world of audio recording. I'll be talking to a group of engineers, usually peers around my age or younger, and they'll be rattling off classic,...
In 2011 an artist by the name of Gotye rose to international prominence on the back of his song, "Somebody That I Used to Know," from his third album, Making Mirrors. Wouter "Wally" De Backer is...
Technician, musician, and recordist Stephen Masucci has been a friend of Tape Op for many years, helping set up interviews and turning us on to some great people. His band, The Lost Patrol, has been a...
Chip was one of the best and hardest-working session guitar pickers/ producer/engineers that Nashville has ever seen. But he was even better at being a granddad, family man, and a Christian. Nashville...
As far as I can reckon, albums that Michael Wagener has produced, engineered, or mixed – including Mötley Crüe's Too Fast for Love, Skid Row's Skid Row, Metallica's Master of Puppets,...
Dan Molad may be best known as part of the band Lucius, or for his current solo release as CHIMNEY, but he's also been involved as a producer, collaborator, and musician with a lot of interesting...
German composer and performance artist Christina Kubisch has created electronic and acoustic music for installations since the '70s. Her work focuses on finding sounds where no one expects, and her...
Twenty years ago, Royer Labs unleashed the "now classic" Royer R–121 mic [Tape Op #19], and (along with AEA) helped point digital-weary engineers back towards the welcome old-school sound of...
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...
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,...
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...
