Woodland is the name of Gillian Welch and David Rawling’s studio in Nashville, and it’s also the name of their new album. On Woodland, the duo continue to show their deep connection as collaborators. The album has a wide open sound that features their seemlessly blended and intimately recorded vocals, and the light touch of a backing band that includes drums, bass, pedal steel, banjo, and airy strings on tunes like "What We Had" and "Hashtag". "Lawman" and "The Bells and the Birds" have a lovely somberness, and the album as a whole has a "live off the floor" feeling to it that we hear less and less of these days. Woodland will stay in our "recently played" column for the forseeable future.
We interviewed Gillian and Dave back in 2001 for Tape Op #85.
Tape Op is a bi-monthly magazine devoted to the art of record making.
My pal David Lowery (Cracker/Camper Van Beethoven) has been doing a cool blog called 300 Songs, telling stories of how songs came about and other crazy stories. The most recent one is about the late Don Smith, who produced and engineered a bunch of...
Just a quick note about the upcoming Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention in Los Angeles. We have arranged for all Tape Op readers to receive a free Exhibits Plus Badge to the convention. This badge is good for the Exhibition PLUS all...
Ace Hotel has long been a favorite among artist/studio types, so when we heard the news that they were going to beginoffering quality recording gear as a literal hotel service, it made sense.
Featured behind their tailored front desk you'll find...
What? Huh? That's right, now you can "use classic studio gear online." This guy Fredrik created some way to remotely set compressors and equalizers and then pass your audio through them. Pretty genius and probably the wave of the future for certain...
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...
I was fortunate enough to get an Apogee Duet 2 recently. This device hooks up to your computer's USB port (and is powered from there) and allows you to monitor audio. I'm not gonna go into all the details, see our review of the original Duet. At...
A pal who deals in pro audio recording gear (some good shit) sent an email our way complaining about people recording with cheap gear at home and the inevitable loss that this presents to the pro audio industry. My response:
XXX,
Look on the Tape...