Women in Audio

Emily A. Sprague may be best known as the primary songwriter and vocalist for the band Florist, who have released five albums since 2016. But she also composes and records ambient-adjacent electronic music, primarily using modular synthesizers, and is about to release her fourth...

After studying Music Production and Engineering at Berklee College of Music, Vanessa Parr headed to L.A. and promptly jumped into studio work. After almost 13 years at The Village as an assistant and engineer, she's now freelancing and teaching. Her experience is wide...

Hazel Mills is a British pianist, synthesist, and songwriter whose day job is touring with the likes of Goldfrapp, Kylie Minogue, Florence + the Machine, Birdy, Dave Rowntree (Blur), and Fraser T. Smith. Mills's classical virtuosity and passion for sampling, minimalism, and...

Jordan Brooke Hamlin is multi-instrumentalist, engineer, producer, and owner of MOXE Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. Jordan's portfolio boasts collaborations with Grammy-winning legends such as the Indigo Girls and Brandi Carlile. In this conversation with Lisa Machac (of...

Linda Smith is a pioneering figure in the bedroom pop genre. With her introspective lyrics and DIY approach to recording, Smith's lo-fi sound was first captured in cassette releases in the '80s and '90s. Despite a 20-year hiatus, Smith's creative spirit...

SASAMI, born Sasami Ashworth, has been a sought-after "jack of all trades" in the indie music world since returning to her hometown of Los Angeles following graduation from classical conservatory at Eastman School of Music. From playing in Cherry Glazerr, to touring...

A compelling Brooklyn-based Pakistani composer, vocalist, and producer, Arooj Aftab's 2021 album, Vulture Prince, brought her voice and music a lot of attention, as well as a Grammy for Best Global Music Performance. Her recent collaboration, Love in Exile, with Shahzad...

Yuka Honda has been a figure in the New York City avant-garde and indie-rock scenes for decades. Releasing her first album in 1989, she has amassed over 268 recording credits as an artist, producer, remixer, and/or accompanist (with her primary instrument being keyboards). The...

A songwriter, producer, mixer, engineer, multi-instrumentalist, director, and actress, Hill Kourkoutis is based in Barrie, a small town outside of Toronto, Canada. In addition to her recording and production work, she creates music videos and mentors emerging artists. In 2022...

With a start at New York City's Record Plant in the mid-'70s, Julie Last continued with her career at Ocean Way Studios in Los Angeles. Now living in Woodstock, NY, she runs her own Cold Brook Productions. Along the way she worked on sessions for Talking Heads, Cheap...

Along with Ana da Silva, Gina Birch led The Raincoats from 1977 to 1984 in England, reforming in 1993, and still collaborating to this day. Their unique approach to music inspired many, including Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, who instigated their '90s' regrouping. Gina...

Experimental and classically-trained percussionist Evelyn Glennie has released almost 50 albums and collaborated with the likes of Björk, Mark Knopfler [Tape Op#97], Fred Frith, Bela Fleck, Bobby McFerrin, and fellow Scot, filmmaker Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog...

A producer, songwriter, and a founding member of the alternative pop band Caveboy, Isabelle Banos is based in Montreal, Canada. Her passion for empowerment through education has led her to become a contributor for LANDR's YouTube, as well as a regular volunteer for the...

A pure obsession with sound drove a young woman from her rural Italian home to the UK and into London's recording studios. A relentless drive to learn how everything in audio works then set her on the path to sessions with Depeche Mode, Björk, Animal Collective, Circuit des...

Gaelynn Lea is one of the most original musicians and songwriters working today. She also happens, by chance, to be a wheelchair user. Incredibly prolific, she has released three solo albums, as well as six collaborations with various groups in the past decade. Hailing from...

Suzy Shinn was just a little kid in Wichita, Kansas, when she began exhibiting the instincts that have since made her a rising star producer and songwriter. "I forced all my friends to be in bands with me, and they hated it," she laughs. "I would sit there and...

Recording engineer Bella Blasko has worked with bands like The National, Big Red Machine, Feist, and Bonny Light Horseman. Additionally, she earned a Grammy nomination for her work on Taylor Swift's "cardigan" from the album, folklore. She recently spoke with Lisa...

Or, conversely, The Anchoress is Catherine Anne Davies, a Welsh-born talented songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, singer, producer, engineer, mixer, and more. Her debut album, Confessions of a Romance Novelist, came out in 2016, but it was 2021's The Art of Losing that...

Many folks who work in the studio straddle the line between musician and engineer on any given day. Sami Perez has kept her feet in both worlds since her teenage years. The result is a sparkling body of work with her bands The She's and Harry the Nightgown, as well as a...

I've known Beau Sorenson for close to ten years now, and around two years ago I met his wife, Maryam Qudus. They are recording engineers and producers, and both create their own music. They work out of Tiny Telephone Recording (often referred to as Tiny), and Tiny's...

Suzanne Ciani is one of my neighbors (who has become a good friend), so it's almost too easy for me to overlook how massive her contribution to music and record production is. That is also due in part to the fact that she is a very warm and open person, and is offhandedly...

With her eighth album, Songwrights Apothecary Lab, vocalist, bassist, and fearless explorer Esperanza Spalding blends input from various disciplines and asks the question, "What do we need a song for?" These 12 tunes were created and captured in various non-studio...

A multi-instrumentalist, performance artist, educator, programmer, and author, Sandy Stone's lived a full enough life to fill several books. With a list of credits that includes Jimi Hendrix, Van Morrison, Crosby & Stills, Mississippi John Hurt, Marty Balin, and The...

With over four decades of experience, Lenise Bent has worked in almost every field of audio engineering, from studio recordings, to post-production, to film sound and foley. Lenise chats with Lisa Machac, of Omni Sound Project, to talk about her career, plans for the future, and...

Brittany "Chi" Coney and Denisia "Blu June" Andrews have been working together as the songwriting and producing duo NOVA WAV for over a decade. Based in Los Angeles, the Grammy-winning pair has collaborated on hits for Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Rihanna, Ariana Grande...

Sarah Tudzin loves solving sonic puzzles, in a quest to bring unexpected depth to her clients' albums as well as her own. With Illuminati Hotties, Tudzin's main songwriting outlet in which she is guitarist, singer, and producer, she's mined veins of punk, from...

In Northern Ireland, in a certain region of the countryside, you can find Analogue Catalogue Recording Studios. This residential studio is run by Julie McLarnon, an engineer/producer with a fascinating history and a passion for analog(ue) recording. Her records for The...

Linda Perry had her first hit with "What's Up?" in 1993, as lead singer and songwriter for 4 Non Blondes. Since then, she's worked as a producer and songwriter for numerous artists, helping shape the sounds of P!nk, Christina Aguilera, Alicia Keys, Adele, and...

Who is Sadie Dupuis? A writer, singer, and guitar player in the band Speedy Ortiz. Producer, writer, and collaborator behind Sad13. Label owner of Wax Nine Records. A writer, with a book of poetry out (Mouthguard) and many published poems. Sad13's Haunted Painting album...

A drummer turned mastering engineer, Piper Payne is a Bay Area audio professional who I've long admired. She has worked with the likes of The Go-Go's, Shannon & the Clams, Third Eye Blind, and LeAnn Rimes. She has advocated tirelessly for greater inclusion in the...

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 five albums, and also had a bundle of Grammy and Americana music award...

Anne Gauthier is a producer, engineer, and drummer who cut her teeth in the Montreal punk scene, touring with bands like TR/ST and The Frenetics. In 2015 she relocated to Louisville, Kentucky, and recently took over as head engineer for La La Land Studios when its founder, Kevin...

Brian Silak and I had the honor of visiting engineer/studio owner Denise Barbarita and her husband, drummer/music educator Rich Kulsar – both recent Grammy winners – at their Long Island City MONOLisa recording studio. We were treated to some really great hummus and an intense...

What do Björk, Beach House, Slowdive, Liturgy, !!!, The Mars Volta, Deerhunter, Explosions in the Sky, serpentwithfeet, and Ryuichi Sakamoto all have in common? Mastering and mixing engineer Heba Kadry. Born and raised in Egypt and now residing in Brooklyn, New York, Heba has...

A frequently overlooked part of hip-hop history and culture, the story of the mixtape deserves to be archived, preserved, and celebrated. Beginning with cassette-recorded board tapes of early hip-hop club performances – featuring innovative beat matching, scratching, and early...

I met Emily Wells years ago and we immediately hit it off, talking about gear and careers. She's released a number of albums of her unique compositions and excellent musicianship (her violin playing is top-notch) in addition to her background in recording. While she was in...

Neko Case released her first album The Virginian in 1997 and since has released six records, documents of her growth as a singer, songwriter, and a producer. Her latest release, Hell On, still has whispers of her Americana past, but leans more toward an art-rock record, with...

Grant Avenue Studio, based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, is a prestigious, fabled, and legendary studio originally built by the brothers Bob and Daniel Lanois [Tape Op#37, #127]. In 1985, musician and engineer/producer Bob Doidge bought the studio; he has since kept up the...

<p style="color: #d99f90 !important;">Last year I had the opportunity to pay a visit to Atlantic Records, right off of Times Square in New York City, to have a conversation with their Senior Engineer, Ebonie Smith. We talked about her history as a producer and...

In 2019, I was asked to moderate a panel at Music Expo Miami, and luckily for us one of the panelists was Maria Elisa Ayerbe, a local recordist, producer, and mixer I had heard much about and wanted to see in Tape Op. With a story stretching from her roots in Colombia, Bolivia...

From the early days of touring with indie luminaries The Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens, to releasing six albums as St. Vincent and recently wrapping up production on a record for Sleater-Kinney,Annie Clark is much more than a modern-day guitar hero. Her left-of-center...

Erin Barra – nicknamed "Mamma Barra" by her many clients and students due to her nurturing, hands-on approach – is a woman of many hats. She is the founder of Beats By Girlz, an organization dedicated to educating and empowering young women in music technology. She is...

I have a habit of getting low key obsessed with certain artists, especially producers and engineers. For months I just can't stop listening to records they've touched. Earlier this year I had a few months of being really deep in that fascination-hole with Shawn Everett...

A young intern fresh out of Full Sail University gets a big break (and a nickname) from Missy Elliott, works alongside producers and engineers like Timbaland, Jimmy Douglass [Tape Op#130], Demacio Castellon, and Polow da Don, and ends up mixing hits for Keri Hilson, Britney...

In March of 2018 I met Holly Herndon at a hotel on the outskirts of Berlin, just two weeks before she was set to defend her Doctor of Musical Arts Music Composition dissertation from Stanford University, and one month before the release of her third album, PROTO, on 4AD Records....

Since 2006 Catherine Vericolli has run her Fivethirteen Recording in Tempe, outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Along with long-time engineer Dominic Armstrong, she's kept the studio busy and growing in a difficult market. I was curious to find out how she started up, and what...

The Miami-based songwriter, producer, and fashionista known as Suzi Analogue lives with synesthesia, a neurological condition that causes one sensory pathway (i.e., hearing) to influence another (vision). In her case, music and visual expression are one and the same. That...

<p style="border-radius: 15px; background-color: #78678c !important; color: #f1f1f1 !important; padding: 20px !important;">As you walk into the offices of ABKCO Music & Records on New York's Fifth Avenue, you're immediately aware that you are...

Julie Kathryn is I Am Snow Angel, a sobriquet under which she composes, performs, produces, engineers, and mixes her own music. She also produces many other artists, such as Grace Lachance and ESS SEE, while working out of her home studio in New York City, or across the world as...

Her bio states, "SassyBlack is a space aged singer, songwriter & producer," and that is a great starting point in digging into her career, one that also includes the titles of freelance writer, entrepreneur, and actor. Catherine ("Cat") Harris-White came...

We got to sit down with Neko Case at Brooklyn, NY's The Honey Jar recording studio to discuss her career so far, as well as her production experiences while tracking and mixing her most recent release, Hell-On. Neko was gracious with her time, and we covered a lot of what...

Julien Baker is more visible than ever. After her low-budget debut, Sprained Ankle, made nearly every best-of 2015 list, the 21-year-old Baker signed with Matador Records and went home to Memphis to record her next record at the legendary Ardent Studios [Tape Op#58]. Turn Out...

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 experiments with electromagnetic induction as a sound source began in the...

Irene Trudel might just be one of the most private people in public radio. A self-professed introvert, Irene has worked in public and commercial radio for over 30 years, and is now a head engineer for WNYC 93.9 FM. Since 1986 she's also hosted her own weekly show on WFMU...

A major star in her native land, via her successful acting and music careers, Argentina's Juana Molina should be a household name in the rest of the world. In 2000 a friend passed along a copy of Juana's second release, Segundo, and I have been hooked since. In April...

Not only is Susan Rogers a record producer, engineer, mixer, and audio electronics technician, she has a doctorate in psychology (having studied music cognition and psychoacoustics) from McGill University. As an engineer Susan really got her start working with Prince from 1983...

I remember the first time I heard Lush. Their sound was dreamy, frenetic, layered, and sounded unlike anything I had ever heard before. They were different, but had a strong pop sensibility. When I saw them live I was impressed by the sheer joy emanating from the stage, both...

Annette Cisneros is a highly experienced engineer and studio manager. Her credits are long and her knowledge is deep. For several years she was Dave Jerden's [Tape Op #86] assistant engineer. When Jerden asked Bryan Carlstrom [Tape Op #28] to join their team, the three of...

Kim Rosen built up her mastering skills and reputation at West West Side Music, before branching off in 2009 to set up her own Knack Mastering in Ringwood, NJ. Since going out on her own, she' s worked with Title Fight, Sarah Jaffe, Jeff Bridges, Braid, The Barr Brothers...

In 1985, when I was 15 years old, my best friend's older brother gave me a cassette tape that said "Throwing Muses Demo" on the label. The first time I played it I was completely blown away — it was like nothing that I had ever heard before. But somehow the fact...

An Australian architecture student bumps into famous producer/engineer Flood while studying in Ireland, returns home to start playing in bands, and eventually moves to London and becomes an in-demand engineer and producer? Sometimes the truth is rather fantastic. I had to figure...

Under the leadership and vision of EveAnna Manley, Manley Labs has created and built some of the finest studio equipment (and high-end home audio components) over the last two decades. Studios across the world count on their mostly tube-based EQs, compressors, microphones...

Almost four years ago, after a 19-year run, the studio savvy group Stereolab went on hiatus. Here's a look at the co-founders, Laetitia Sadier and Tim Gane as well as their thoughts on recording and creativity in the studio. Fresh off the release of her second solo album...

Some time back I was given the interesting job of restoring tapes and 7-inch singles on a unique project for the Ace Hotel and Swim Club in Palm Springs. I enlisted the aid of Jamie Howarth and his Plangent Processes (see #94URL) in saving these tapes from the early '70s....

Located near Mount Shasta in Northern California is a thriving complex known as RadioStar Studios. In four different rooms people are making music — mixing, tracking and overdubbing constantly. How did this come to pass? Sylvia Massy made a good name for herself as a producer in...

Sally Browder is a producer/engineer working in Los Angeles. The path to her career was an odd one, paved with lots of luck along the way, but the results are impressive. Initially working with artists like Wayne Kramer, The Humpers, Rocket From The Crypt, Claw Hammer and labels...

Juliana Hatfield is an independent songwriter, musician, writer and artist who lives in Boston, Massachusetts. She has recorded well over a dozen albums, first with the Blake Babies and later as a solo artist, and has sung and played on records by other artists, ranging from...

I first worked with Leanne Ungar in 1992, when I was an assistant engineer at The Complex in West Los Angeles. The record was Leonard Cohen's The Future. Leanne has been engineering records for Leonard since 1984, and she's been in the recording business since the...

Throughout her career, Ani Difranco has put out albums at an amazing rate, averaging about one release every nine months. Her fourteen albums have all been self-produced, and released on her own Righteous Babe Records. Despite working at such a clip, her production style has...

Hillary first came to Tape Op's attention when she e-mailed us, from New York, with some hot "snapple-micing" tips (see the letters in issue #3). I was impressed with her rockin' producer/engineer r&Egrave;sum&Egrave; which included the Ramones, the...