Monitor Positioning
by Carl Tatz
Do Do toe in your near-field monitors to a 30 degree angle. Do space your near-field monitors far enough apart so that the apex of your equilateral triangle is 18 inches behind your head....
interviews
We talk at length with record-makers about how they make records.
Cowboy Jack Clement: Jerry Lee Lewis, Charley Pride, U2
by Gerald Jensen
"Cowboy" Jack Clement is a guitar player, singer, songwriter, engineer, publisher and producer, born in 1931 in Tennessee. He began working in Memphis at Sun Records in 1956, engineering and producing...
Yeasayer: Cymbals and Blood
by Zac Meyer
So you play in a band and you produce your own stuff. Awesome — me too. And like a 5 foot 6- inch aspiring football player watches Rudy, I listen to Yeasayer. Their 2007 debut album, All Hour...
Jamie Stewart: of Xiu Xiu
by Jonathan Meiburg
As the principal writer, performer and engineer behind the group Xiu Xiu, Jamie Stewart has been responsible for some of the most exciting and unsettling indie music of the last decade, attracting a...
Ernst Nathorst-Boos and Marcus Zetterquist: Behind the Gear with Propellerhead
by Larry Crane
Ernst Nathorst-Boos and Marcus Zetterquist, along with Peter "Pelle" Jubel, founded Propellerhead Software in 1994. Propellerhead, based in Stockholm Sweden, has given us some unique software for...
Girl Camp Studio: Recording with The Rock 'n' Roll Camp For Girls
by Lauren K. Newman
The Rock 'n' Roll Camp For Girls of Portland, Oregon was founded in 2001 with the intent of bringing girls and young women together to learn more about music and encourage creativity. Girls aged 8 to...
Neve Style Preamps: Imitation in the Sincerest Form:
by Allen Farmelo
By far one of the most revered and imitated microphone preamp/equalizers is the Neve 1073, originally released in the early 1970s as the main channel module in the infamous 80 Series consoles. There...
Mac McCaughan: Superchunk, Portastatic and Merge
by Larry Crane
Mac McCaughan is well known for his 20 years as the front man for the Chapel Hill, NC, band Superchunk, co-owner (with Laura Ballance) of the influential independent record label Merge Records and the...
Alan Evans: Playonbrother Studios and Soulive
by Larry Crane
Drummer Alan Evans and his bandmates (Eric Krasno on guitar and Alan's brother Neal Evans on keyboards) have led the funk/jazz trio Soulive through over 10 years of tours, albums and studio sessions....
Gurf Morlix: Rootball Recording in Austin, TX
by Larry Crane
Gurf Morlix likes to produce, engineer, perform, write and even just plain talk about music. It might sound hackneyed to say, but music is his life's blood, the passion that drives his spirit. Born in...
Brad Avenson: Behind the Gear with Avenson Audio
by Larry Crane
For years now I've been bumping into Brad Avenson, a real down-to-earth guy who's been building his Avenson Audio company up with small, ingenious little tools to help us all make better records...
DIY Reverb
by Nicolas Collins
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...