Interviews
By Larry Crane
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 Spears, Keyshia Cole, Meek...
Interviews
From a not-so-obvious career path that began by servicing early samplers, to engineering parts of a Michael Jackson's HIStory
Interviews
Brian and I drove to Philly on Sunday, December 3, 2017, to attend the first of two world premier performances and recording session...
Interviews
Interviews
The Ocean Blue have been making dreamy pop albums since the late '80s. Their new release, Kings and Queens / Knaves and Thieves, is a perfect example of a self-recorded album that works in the best ways. When they came to Portland to perform, main songwriter and singer David Schelzel dropped by my Jackpot! Recording to chat about the records they made in the past and how they work together now.
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 [Tape Op #115] and all the recent records he's engineered or mixed for artists like Lucius, The War On Drugs, Kacey Musgraves, and Margeret Glaspy. The list goes on and on, but would be criminally incomplete without mentioning the masterpiece that is Alabama Shakes' Sound & Color, one of many records he's made with producer Blake Mills [Tape Op #115]. Just imagine the excitement I felt when I got a phone call asking if was available to meet Shawn and the Shake's Brittany Howard to discuss their work together on her upcoming solo record, Jamie. Needless to say I was on the next flight to L.A.
We first interviewed Eric Valentine in Tape Op #45 and discussed his production career and techniques. Eric is well known as a producer and engineer for working with Third Eye Blind, Smash Mouth, Good Charlotte, Queens of the Stone Age, and more recently Grace Potter. But in 2007 he took the unusual step of starting a pro audio gear company called UnderToneAudio. With the fairly glutted pro audio marketplace, why would a successful producer go down the black hole of manufacturing audio gear? We sat down with Eric to find out.
In Tape Op #16, my pal Stephen Murray interviewed Tchad Blake while he was in the middle of co-producing Pearl Jam's Binaural album in Seattle. Nearly two decades later, Tchad and I sat down in New York to discuss the intervening years, his inspiring mixing style, and relocating to Wales, where's he's been living for over a decade. He's worked on records by Los Lobos, Sheryl Crow, The Black Keys, Peter Gabriel, Madeleine Peyroux, and many others.
The Rupert Neve name has always been on my list of desirable gear to own. His Rupert Neve Designs has taken the best elements of his older, coveted designs and jettisoned the compromises of yesteryear. I reviewed the RND Shelford Channel in Tape Op #118, a channel strip that has all the benefits...
Drobo is a US-based company specializing in data storage solutions. More than a drive enclosure, the 5N2 provides data protection, web-based file management, and scalable capacity. My photography and videography colleagues rely on Drobo. When other creatives agree on a reliable tool, it's a good...
I didn't think it would be appropriate to have Tape Op's journalistic integrity called into question if my review only included the phrase "HOLY SHIT!" over and over again, so it looks like I'll have to write more than that for a proper review – but let me unequivocally state here that this is my...
I love simple, thoughtfully-designed tools for the studio that solve a common problem, and do so inexpensively. The Royer Labs R-121 [Tape Op #19] ribbon mic is one of the few products made in the past 20 years that can be rightfully called a classic, and almost every serious studio and recordist...
Yamaha NS-10s (along with other equipment, like the Shure SM57) have undoubtedly been among the most omnipresent tools of our trade in the past three decades. Most professional engineers fall pretty heavily on one side or the other, the two sides being: 1. "I can't make a record without them," or;...
Dan Gillespie founded Newfangled Audio to merge his digital processing experience with his interest in machine learning. Drawing on 15 years of writing DSP code for Eventide, Elevate is a suite that embodies their objective. Comprised of a multiband limiter (Elevate), transient shaper (Punctuate),...
Coming from a family of jewelers in Iowa, and growing up fascinated with small scale measurements and attention to detail, Eric Heiserman became a DIY community mainstay by manufacturing an established line of classically-based capsules for replacement or microphone modification. Now located in...
A little over a year ago I was finishing up a session when a producer I was working with handed me a mic and said, "Hey man, have you heard of this? You should really try it." He put a JZ Microphones Vintage 67 in my hand, and after taking one look at its forward thinking design, I scoffed and...
It's no secret I'm a big fan of AEA microphones. When my studio High Bias Recordings first opened the Michigan Ave. location, I bought a pair of AEA R84s [Tape Op #38] and the rest is history. In the years since, I have amassed a moderate collection of their mics and have fallen in love with each...
Kali Audio's first product line, the Lone Pine Series, debuted in mid 2018. Charles Sprinkle is Kali's Director of Acoustics, and before joining Kali Audio was Principle Systems Engineer at JBL Professional, where he designed JBL's Image Control Waveguide (tweeter horns) as used in their M2 Master...
Come close for a minute. Let's talk about mic stands. You know the type – the kind that look like someone with a doctorate in industrial engineering designed them; the kind that you can truly set and forget... the kind that you trust to suspend your dearest and heaviest microphones yards above...
You might think that the new MODX synthesizer from Yamaha is just a compact version of their flagship MONTAGE keyboard [Tape Op #127], and on the surface you might be right (the MODX sound engine is based on the same technology as the MONTAGE) – but there's a lot more here to unpack. MONTAGE 6...
When I asked a handful of reviewers to consider writing about Hamptone's 500 Series JFET microphone preamp, the prolific Don Gunn from Seattle and stalwart Detroit gear nerd Chris Koltay were among the first to accept. Hamptone's owner, Scott Hampton, generously provided preamps to both reviewers;...
Where to start a review of a product or software is especially tricky when you have been working with it for almost 20 years. I began using Nuendo v1.5 in 2000 when it was first released for Mac OS. At the time, Nuendo's biggest draws were that I was not required to use any dedicated/proprietary...
AudioScape is run by Chris Yetter in Daytona, Florida, and currently produces six different compressors and an EQ, all based off of classic, well-known designs – including an SSL style bus compressor and British Zener-style diode compressor! Focusing on no compromise remakes while hitting...
Unusually heavy for its size and price point, the RØDE PodMic dynamic broadcast microphone feels overbuilt to the very meaning of the word. With an industrial black and silver look and minimalist all metal construction, this mic (and included yoke mount) weigh nearly two pounds. It's a cliche to...
It's no real secret how I feel about Eventide. As I'm writing this, I'm fresh off of an insane 36-hour road trip to and from Montoursville, Pennsylvania. Why? A guy was selling a huge pile of gear as a lot, some of it unremarkable, but we drove all the way there and back in a cargo van because...
When working in studios all the time, using a plethora of gear, and getting comfortable using certain expected pieces of equipment, it's sometimes difficult to feel genuinely excited about something new; I'm not jaded, but I view the things I use on a daily basis as tools rather than new audio...
I'm not sure when it happened exactly, but at some point I lost interest in tap-dancing all over huge, sprawling pedalboards. When putting together a new rig in advance of some fall touring, I opted instead for the smallest solution I felt could reasonably suffice. What I've not lost interest in,...
MAAT's thEQorange is an update of the famous Algorithmix PEQ Orange linear EQ plug-in. The original Orange EQ (along with its Red sibling) were very popular with mastering houses. Users suggested that plug-ins were approaching the quality of hardware/dedicated digital processors. A series of events...
Focal's professional monitors have become quite popular in recording studios over the past several years, from their smaller 2-way systems like the Solo6 Be [Tape Op #60] to larger 3-way systems like the SM9s [#108]. Since I'm constantly looking to stay on top of developments in midfield monitors...
I can't say I'm a huge fan of the part of the Behringer business model that seems to copy designs and intellectual property from other manufacturers, then rebuild said designs super cheaply in China. But on the other hand, not everybody can afford to buy fancy, handmade, boutique audio gear, so I...
sE Electronics, at just under two decades old, has become well known in the microphone field, with over 25 models in production. The attention to detail and build quality of the microphones they produce in their own factory reflect the values of the family-owned company. Recently I tried out sE's...