Interviews | No. 173
By Larry Crane and Matthew Coughlin
There are a few engineer/producers I've met along the way where I've meant to get an interview with them for ages, but for some reason it takes so much longer for us to find the time to do it. Trina Shoemaker has been one of these elusive folks ever since we first met in New...
Making the transition from artist to professional songwriter usually divorces the composer from the final shape of the piece, leaving the execution in the hands of distant artists, producers and on the most unfortunate occasions, an A&R representative provided by the record label....
It's easy to play a "six degrees of separation game" with an engineer-producer who's worked with the likes of Joe Pass, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and Vince Gill. Rather than tout his resume, however, Ed Eastridge refers to himself as "a musician who knew...
Before sitting down to talk with Chris Zane at Gigantic Studios in Chinatown, New York City, he gave me a quick tour of the place. Yes, it is the former Looking Glass Studios founded and built by Philip Glass and yes, it still has Glass's Bösendorfer concert grand piano...
In Tape Op #85 we interviewed Joel Hamilton about working on the Blakroc project. Here's a bit more about his background.
If you spend some time around Trey Spruance, it's not uncommon to hear him expounding on Islamic theologians, geopolitics or holes in the Big Bang Theory. Yet Trey is better known not for his encyclopedic abilities, but for his former band Mr. Bungle and current project Secret...
It's not an exaggeration to say that most non-Icelandic people come to know of this tiny island country through the records Valgeir Sigurðsson made with Björk, and there's no denying that these records were some of the most innovative, genre-bending works of...
As a mastering engineer, Steve Hoffman has worked on many classic recordings, but very few of them would be considered standard CD or LP releases. After working at MCA on reissue CDs from Buddy Holly and The Who (among others), he entered the audiophile world. He is currently a free...
It turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. My friend Miles Hermann did about 8 or 9 different portraits but felt like he hadn't quite hit it right. "Everytime I felt I was getting close, I'd go a little further and it felt like I lost it." I suggested Miles try...
Roll Music Systems has been slowly bringing out pro audio products since 2003. Starting as a small recording studio in Minneapolis, this company (Justin Ulysses Morse and John Sommer, aka Johnny Smokes) has some unique and excellent gear.
Early in 2010 I got to work with Bob Clearmountain while he mixed the recent Bryan Ferry album, Olympia, with producer Rhett Davies at (my long-time mentor) Hugh Padgham's Sofa Sound studio in West London. One of the world's most successful mix engineers, Bob invented the...
There used to be a television show called What's My Line, wherein panelists interviewed a contestant and had to guess his or her occupation. Michael Beinhorn would have been an ideal contestant. The producer behind some of rock music's heaviest artists could easily pass as a...
Tristan Perich is a young experimental musician living and working in New York City. He creates interesting devices to present his original compositions, such as the recent 1-Bit Symphony. Encased in a CD jewel case are electronics and a battery that plays a lo-fi electronic piece...