ISSUE ARCHIVE
NO. 171 | Nov 2025
NO. 170 | Sep 2025
NO. 169 | Sep 2025
NO. 168 | Jul 2025
NO. 167 | May 2025
NO. 166 | Mar 2025
NO. 165 | Jan 2025
NO. 164 | Nov 2024
Nov/Dec 2021
From a recent letter to Tape Op: "Would it be possible to do some interviews where the subject matter deals more with the technical side of equipment usage? I'm sure the experience and technical knowhow from the pros that you are able to interview would be invaluable."
See Clarke Rigsby's letter this issue for the story about this cartoon!
1. With minimal instruction, it's not hard to learn how to set a basic mic preamp level, find usable compression settings, or even bias and calibrate a tape deck.
2. It's incredibly hard to teach or describe when to pick one mic preamp over another, to be correct on mic placement on the first try, or to know when a mix is done.
I've rarely seen any books that have done a perfect job of instructing even the most basic skills of recording, let alone what an experienced engineer knows in their bones. I've sat with people like Michael Brauer [Tape Op#131], Sally Browder [#57], and Tchad Blake [#133], picking their brains on mixing techniques but never getting any simple, easy-to-apply answers. Instead, I've walked away with philosophies, concepts, goals, and ways to behave with others; thoughts that I have spent days, months, and years applying while finding what works for me, and making them my own. There's never a magic "recipe" for any of this recording craft. However, through patience and consideration I find the answers via others' stories, attitudes, and the exciting music that they help create. It's really all in there; you just have to keep reading, thinking, and doing.
— LARRY CRANE,EDITOR & FOUNDER
Fleetwood Mac's Rumours came out right before I started high school. I remember most of my graduating class (not including me!) singing "Dreams" at our ceremony in a park by a local creek. Growing up...
Who is Steve Lukather? The guitarist, vocalist, and one of the songwriters of Toto. A session player with ridiculous credits, like Michael Jackson's Thriller, Lionel Richie, Boz Scaggs, Earth, Wind &...
With over four decades of experience, Lenise Bent has worked in almost every field of audio engineering, from studio recordings, to post-production, to film sound and foley. Lenise chats with Lisa Mac...
Looking at, and listening to, U.K.-based mixer Nathan Boddy's seemingly endless credit list puts him at the top of this game. He's mixed everyone from Gary Numan [Tape Op #125] to Celeste to James Bla...
When John Baccigaluppi and I interviewed Trevor Horn [Tape Op #89] in 2012 at his SARM West Studios, the name Stephen Lipson continually came up. For six years Trevor and Stephen worked together on ma...
Josh Kaufman has been busy. A producer, co-writer, and sideman to the likes of Bob Weir, Hiss Golden Messenger, The Hold Steady, and more, he's been showing up in all my favorite music lately. Josh an...
For over 15 years, drummer/producer/engineer Danny Reisch's analog-centric studio Good Danny's has been a hub of Austin, Texas' thriving music scene. Danny cut his teeth making records with bands such...
I stumbled across Beauty Pill on Bandcamp while poking around the internet looking for new music. There were a few tracks posted from a forthcoming soundtrack to a play called suicide.chat.room. It wa...
We first interviewed Mark Linett in Tape Op #47 about his work with Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys. Since then he's overseen an extensive amount of The Beach Boys' archives, and with the recent relea...
Stan Shaff's fascination with the use of sound movement as a compositional tool grew out of his roots as a jazz trumpet player. In 1960, he began staging the first of his live "sound sculptures" throu...