Interviews
By Steve Silverstein
My first exposure to New Zealand pop band the Clean came several years after the release of 1990's Vehicle, and I discovered their early singles and EPs after that. While the songwriting on Vehicle still impresses me, the band's early releases surprise me far more. Their combination of the...
Interviews
Looking at the resume of Sean Slade and Paul Kolderie is like reading a who's who of '90s rock: Radiohead, Hole, Dinosaur...
Interviews
While puzzling through the intricacies of home recording (i.e. knowing what to do when you can't hear yourself through the headph...
Interviews
For the last 20 years, Chris Knox's approach to home recording has remained consistently creative and interesting. He has insisted upon approaching the technical limitations of his home studio as a strength to exploit rather than a weakness to hide. His music, both in the duo Tall Dwarfs and on his own, has remained relevant from the punk era through the popularity of indie rock and beyond. Despite the geographic detachment of his New Zealand home base, he's influenced countless bands throughout the world. I talked to Chris at the Chicago concert of his most recent US tour, where he was promoting two new releases, Beat and Almost.
Tucked away in a basement in Brooklyn, NY, is a sweet little studio known as Marlborough Farms. It's also the residence of Gary Olson, the driving force behind The Ladybug Transistor. In this studio Gary and his pal Bill Wells have made a number of amazing sounding albums for Ladybug, Saturnine and the Essex Green. And it was all done in a small room with no isolation. How? Let's see...
We interviewed Phill Brown in Tape Op #12. Over the years he's worked with some of the greatest artists ever, like Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Traffic, Spooky Tooth, Jeff Beck, Led Zeppelin, Robert Palmer, Bob Marley, Steve Winwood, Harry Nilsson, Roxy Music, Stomu Yamash'ta, John Martyn, Little Feat, Atomic Rooster, and Talk Talk. This is another excerpt from his (as yet) unpublished book, Are We Still Rolling? Last issue: Phill worked with Dana Gillespie and had a frightening time with PCP. –LC
This is a one rack-space device that, as its name suggests, operates as a complete input channel, featuring a mic pre, high and low pass shelving, EQ and compression. And since it was designed by Mr. Rupert Neve, you can guess that it sounds pretty damn good! At first I was a bit skeptical - $3000...
My search for nearfield monitors is temporarily over. I finally stopped reading reviews or looking at ads and took another engineer's endorsement (Bruce Kaphan in San Francisco) to heart and ordered a pair of these Dynaudio BM-6As ($2000). I was not unhappy. They are self-powered with 2 100 watt...
Ever since I had to return my review copy of the Audio Technica 4047, I'd been feeling that there was a hole in my mic collection. I needed a good quality condenser mic with the sort of pronounced mid-range response that my Manley tube mic didn't have. Well, the Dragonfly is it. It's ripping on...
Most of the focus of the audio industry goes into making new, innovative products, so it's nice to see someone go after the functional necessity side of things. MAM (Music and More) is a small German company that makes inexpensive analog processing (filters, phasers, EQs and a cool 11 band vocoder...
Antares Audio Technologies, the software DSP innovator that brought the world the Auto-Tune, has come forth with their latest digital mojo-in-a-box called the Microphone Modeler ($249). Perhaps you've heard of this new plug-in that claims to be able to take recorded input from even the most...
A few months ago, I picked up a Tascam MX-2424 hard disk recorder to supplement my analog multitrack decks. Three reasons convinced me to finally buy a digital recorder. 1. On a number of recent projects, I found myself wishing I had more than 16 or 24-tracks of tape at my disposal. With more than...
Using Pro Tools? Got 888/24s? Does leaving tape behind make you feel creepy? Or does fixing stuff on PT and then putting it back worry you? Heard about the more expensive Apogees? Well get hip to wordclock distribution! Oh yes! and jitter specs too! By feeding each of your 888/24 interfaces with a...
The PCP distro is a hoot! Feeding a guitar into more than two amps at the same time can be a drain on the pickup and produce a weedy sound. The PCP device is buffered and fools the pick up that it is driving just one amp and each device connected to the 3 outputs is lead to believe it's "the only...
At first glance, this collection of 74 VST Macintosh plug-ins might seem like a bit of a novelty. For one thing, it's only $74 retail whereas many manufacturers sell single plug-ins in the $200-$500 range. The goofy looking cartoon character on the front of the box doesn't do much either to instill...
I'm an old school kinda guy, so when a POD Pro found its way into the rack at my studio I just kept laughing at the idea of really using it on electric guitars - and I usually don't. I've only plugged a guitar or bass into it a few times, but I use it a lot. It's the best thing for adding a bit of...
Have you ever plugged a nice guitar into a good amp and gotten a really nice sound that fell short because it was too plain? This pedal solves that problem. When I think of Bruce Springsteen's guitar sound I think of it as "electric." I don't recall his tone as being a pure clean sound and I...