Interviews

Jackpot! Recording Music Production "Secrets": Larry Crane's lynda.com Video Tutorials

How does a newbie learn the secret handshake of the recording community and master the tricks that make the pros sound so professional? Larry Crane's new video courses on lynda.com can help.

One of the biggest challenges young musicians face when trying to break into the business is this conundrum: You need experience to land the good studio jobs, but experience-well, it comes from those good studio jobs. It's a catch-22 that makes professional recording seem like a black art passed around among insiders.

But video training has changed all that. Online tutorials allow anyone to learn anything, at any time, anywhere-and at lynda.com, you don't have to sneak into studios or intern on those 2 a.m. sessions to get an insider's view into recording. Two of our new courses, Music Recording Secrets: Larry Crane on Recording and Music Recording Secrets: Larry Crane on Mixing, invite anyone to virtually step inside Jackpot! Recording Studio with owner, founder, and Tape Op magazine editor Larry Crane. Get an up-close look at the tips, tricks and workflow techniques that have served Larry well in producing artists like She & Him, Elliott Smith, Sleater-Kinney, The Decemberists, and many more.

From mic'ing up a snare drum to spicing up cymbal hits to getting a tight, punchy bass tone that pairs seamlessly with your kick drum, Larry's lynda.com courses take you deep inside the recording process from his firsthand perspective, demonstrating how to get the best sounds possible from your recording space and equipment.

In Music Recording Secrets: Larry Crane on Recording, Larry takes you through the recording process: setting levels, placing microphones, and getting a vocal tone and performance that's just right for the track. He looks at creative ways to supplement a sterile DI for recording bass guitar that can help you add a unique twist to your groove, and show you how to remove the hums, clicks, and buzzes that can ruin an otherwise perfect take.

Next, Music Recording Secrets: Larry Crane on Mixing shows how to add energy and vitality to those raw tracks you've just captured. Larry shows how to set up your space for mixing, remove noise, and add compression and EQ to help your tracks sit neatly together in the mix. Then he offers tips for adding flair to your tracks by re-amping instruments, adding splashes of delay and reverb to shape your soundstage, and using effects like reverse delays.

That's the kind of advice that comes only from a working professional at the top of his game. Join Larry at lynda.com and learn how to get the most from your tracks.

MORE INTERVIEWS

Hidden Musics
INTERVIEWS · ISSUE #175 · Sep 2026

Hidden Musics

By Ian Brennan

By 2014, I'd already been transitioning for more than five years from working in traditional studios to almost exclusively doing field recordings overseas. As a result, I'd had some success with groups like Tinariwen, Malawi Mouse Boys, and The Good Ones. At that point, the...

Yves Jarvis
INTERVIEWS · ISSUE #175 · Sep 2026

Yves Jarvis

By Geoff Stanfield

Yves Jarvis is the moniker of Canadian musician Jean-Sébastien Yves Jarvis. His latest release, All Cylinders, won Canada’s Polaris Music Prize for best album of 2025, a record on which Jarvis wrote and performed all of the 16 tracks. Made entirely using Audacity and a half-broken...

Joe Boles
INTERVIEWS · ISSUE #175 · Sep 2026

Joe Boles Seattle Recording Pioneer

By Alex Kostelnik

In the mid-1950s, Seattle was host to the little-known music recording legacy of Jay F. "Joe" Boles. A fraction of his discography includes The Ventures, The Wailers, Cab Calloway, Big Jay McNeely, Buck Owens, The Fleetwoods, Robert "Bumps" Blackwell, Ella...

  Rostam Batmanglij
INTERVIEWS · ISSUE #175 · Sep 2026

Rostam Batmanglij Sonic Cinema

By Sam Retzer

Ever since Rostam Batmanglij burst onto the scene as a founding member of Vampire Weekend, he’s been known for his penchant for baroque and leftfield sounds in pop-leaning indie music. Fresh out of college, he handled production for the first three Vampire Weekend albums (Vampire...

Melina Duterte
INTERVIEWS · ISSUE #175 · Sep 2026

Melina Duterte Sharing Curiosity

By Danielle Goldsmith

Melina Duterte began recording her own music armed with little more than a laptop, a budget mic, and a fascination with how records are made. As Jay Som, she crafted a distinctive sound defined by textural, layered guitars, and soft, intimate vocals. Since then, Duterte has expanded...

Oli Jacobs
INTERVIEWS · ISSUE #175 · Sep 2026

Oli Jacobs Friends & Commitment

By Larry Crane

A graduate of the Tonmeister course, a former Head Engineer at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios [Tape Op#63], and now an in-demand mixer, engineer, and collaborator with Jack Antonoff and Laura Sisk [#135], Oli Jacobs has had a heck of a career path. He’s worked on records for artists...