Quaintly nestled in the western region of upstate New York, USA, between Buffalo and Erie, Pennsylvania, lies a small blink-and-you'll-miss-it town named Cassadaga; a place where maybe the most...
Another fact is that last year they released one of the best American records in a long time, Deserter Songs. Recorded by the hot producer of the day, Dave Fridmann, it was an instant classic. We...
Wharton Tiers has run Fun City studios out of his Manhattan basement since 1981. He's recorded some of the finest records by Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Helmet, Unrest and many more. It's an...
So what do you do when the band you're interviewing asks you to chop up the tape, splice it back together and print it just like that. You do it of course! Well, if you have gleaned anything from...
Robyn Hitchcock has long been one of my favorite artists, whether it's the spastic psychedelia of his former group The Soft Boys or one of his many solo records, there's always great songs with...
In his tiny apartment in New York, Dean Wilson, aka Illyah Kuryahkin, has created some of the strangest and coolest music we've heard in years. His first album, Count No Count, was recorded on a...
Ween gets away with murder. It is one of the few bands that writes, records, and releases exactly what it wants. The group's songs can be daring, funny, offensive, and tender. Composed of Mickey...
We interviewed Phill Brown in issue number 12 of Tape Op. Over the years he's worked with some of the greatest artists ever, like Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Traffic, Spooky Tooth, Jeff Beck, Led...
When overdubbing, perform your parts while blindfolded, or with minimal light. This will help you focus on the "sound". Our brains tend to give most attention to visual stimuli. Only perform...
Setup/Getting sounds When I first started recording I used wonder how long I was supposed to take when setting up and getting drum sounds. Sometimes it took one or two hours, and other times it...
As long as I have been involved in music I've had a healthy respect for women who are part of the music community. Most of the bands I've ever been in had female musicians, I've trained women...
This low-budget publishing effort manages to give a solid introduction to MIDI drumming. It covers nothing too advanced, especially given the expansion of MIDI options since 1987, but if you're a...
For those who thought electronic music started with rave culture or people like myself, who don't really want to buy whole Morton Subotnick albums but have always been curious, this is a cool find....
A lot of people are jumping on the Meek bandwagon and I happen to be one of them. Of course it's the obnoxious Meek green, but it still sounds great. Up front it has a fairly clean and neutral preamp...
I am really lucky because a very good friend of mine gave me his vintage Neumann U-67 to use on one of those indefinite loan kind of deals. It really does sound fantastic, and I use it all the time....
One of the best things about using a dedicated recording chain is that it frees up inputs and busses on your mixing console. It's also impossible to accidentally "buss" some other audio into your...
The U8 comes at a time when recording into a computer seems so non-tactile... operating the "tape deck" and punching in with a mouse doesn't quite work for me in the music making/recording process....
Have you ever been in a studio and embarrassed yourself by A/B-ing your mix with that amazing sounding Nirvana record and the band walks in and screams, "Hey, don't make us sound like Nirvana!" Well,...
