Interviews
By Jonathan Meiburg, Guillaume Tunzini
You might not know Brian Reitzell's name, but you probably know his work. As the music supervisor and composer for most of Sofia Coppola's films, he's worked with the French electronic duo Air on The Virgin Suicides, coaxed My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields out of retirement for...
Interviews
John Rodd might not be a household name, but it's likely you've heard his work. As a recording and mix engineer, he's ...
Interviews
We've seen a lot more documentaries come down the pike lately, and thanks to a multitude of cable channels and video streaming...
Interviews
In the Allen Sides interview in issue #106 of Tape Op, Allen mentioned owning a few Church...
Interviews
Back in 2000, while on a session break, I got a call at the studio. It was a friendly...
Interviews
Psych Pop has been enjoying a healthy resurgence. The loudest shots from the latest wave...
John Rodd might not be a household name, but it's likely you've heard his work. As a recording and mix engineer, he's worked on many film and television scores, including Elysium, Breaking Bad, The Lincoln Lawyer, Son of Batman, In the Beginning, and Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox. John has also worked on tons of video games, such as Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Kinect Star Wars, and World of Warcraft. Along the way he's recorded and mixed classical, rock, electronica, and jazz from solo voice to huge choirs and from string quartets to full orchestras. This breadth of experience, as well as an ability to handle the stress of intense deadlines and huge sessions, made me curious to find out more about his career. I visited him at his beautiful commercial facility in the Los Angeles area one sunny afternoon.
I've been using a pair of Dynaudio Professional BM6 mkIII monitors for about four months now in my home mixing setup, and I took to them more quickly and confidently than I ever have to any nearfield speakers. If you asked the Dynaudio engineers why, they would probably tell you that the aluminum...
21st century perspective reveals that, in many ways, the advancement of recording technology has been chronologically non-linear. Rather than a tidy progression from primitive-to-sophisticated, we could easily characterize the developments as an evolution from one set of priorities to another. The...
We roam the frigid, soulless digital landscape, searching in vain for the analog mojo that was once ours. We buy expensive A/D converters, we compress everything, we emulate tape, and sometimes, we just distort the shit out of shit. I'm down. Whether it's adding subtle hair to otherwise pristine...
The use of effect pedals at the mixing board is by no means a new thing. I remember studio owners thinking I was crazy in the '90s when I patched in a SansAmp Bass Driver DI or BOSS DM-2 Delay pedal on vocals at mix. Then everyone was talking about that Strokes vocal sound and saying it was a Rat...
Just nod your head and pretend like you know what they're talking about. "Of course it's the op amp, not the power supply!" But you really have no idea what they're talking about, do you? If you're tired of being the lost guy in the studio with regards to audio electronics, check out Electronic...
At first glance, the H9 Harmonizer can be easily mistaken for a fancy guitar pedal adorned with pretty LEDs. Upon further study, it becomes clear that the H9 is so much more than a stompbox. It's hard to even begin describing all that it can do! First of all, as the legendary Harmonizer name...
Sometimes you need a hammer. Sometimes you need a Leatherman. Then again, maybe you need eight hammers with a folding torque-wrench attachment plus bottle openers on each. Um. What I'm trying to say is that this eight-input mic preamp from Focusrite does a lot of heavy lifting for my studio,...
Prism Sound is best known for their world-class digital converters. A few years back, the company released the Orpheus FireWire interface. Soon, new members were added to the family — Atlas, Titan, Lyra 1, Lyra 2 — all eschewing FireWire in favor of USB. Both Lyra models incorporate the audio path...
In releasing this hardbound book, the folks at Ableton have continued to highlight their company and product as "the DAW that's different." It's hard to imagine any of the other major players in the DAW landscape even considering a project like this, but for Ableton, it seems like a natural fit....
The AES Convention is one of the more entertaining and overwhelming events in our little universe of audio. I flew out to Los Angeles for the conference this past October and walked the convention floor several times over to mostly familiar sites. One booth caught my eye and eventually my ear....
The new SONAR that replaces SONAR X3 will be the last one ever — no more numbered editions according to Cakewalk. But that doesn't mean that this is the last release you'll ever need. Cakewalk is dropping the numbers and no longer following a software cycle of major and minor releases. Instead,...
The Splice MKII is an 1176-style FET compressor in a 2RU-height rackmount chassis. The original Splice, which is no longer available, was a 500-series module. The roomier faceplate of the MKII rackmount unit allowed Serpent Audio to incorporate additional features. The result is a fresh take on one...
Prolific inventor Laurens Hammond was granted a patent for the spring reverb in 1939, and in the decades that followed, Hammond incorporated this novel artificial reverberation device in the organs that were being sold to the many small churches throughout the U.S. that were notably not...
There's gear that does its job in technically proficient and sometimes even colorful ways. In the capable hands of skilled producers and engineers, the gear brings to life the instruments and sounds that run through its electronic pathways. And then there's gear that is musical in its own right —...
Several pieces of gear in my studio experienced vacuum tube failures. After I found myself spending money for maintenance and parts, I realized that I would benefit from learning more about tubes and how to maintain tube gear. My friend Pat Kaufman, who fixes amps at Main Drag Music in Brooklyn,...