Interviews
By Garrett Haines, Olinda Mar
It's 1970, and a man runs a respected barbershop in inner-city Philadelphia. One day his five-year-old son asks him for a timeslot to DJ for the patrons. (He also wants to borrow some records). Most might've laughed at the request, but not this father. He and his wife value art, education,...
Interviews
Ian MacKaye and I have been friends for over 20 years, ever since I convinced him and the band he was in, Fugazi, to come and play ...
Interviews
A frequently overlooked part of hip-hop history and culture, the story of the mixtape deserves to be archived, preserved, and celebr...
Interviews
The second half of the 1960s saw a dramatic shift in the way albums were recorded, not...
Interviews
I first met Randy Kohrs years ago at the Summer NAMM tradeshow in Tennessee. Randy is...
For the better part of three decades, Butch Walker has simultaneously been a rising and continuous presence in music-making. From his early days in the late '80s glam metal band SouthGang, to Marvelous 3 in the '90s, as well as numerous releases under his own name and penning hit songs for artists like Taylor Swift and Frank Turner, plus producing albums for a massive list of artists including Pink, Weezer, Green Day, Fall Out Boy, Saosin, Katy Perry, Avril Lavigne, Sevendust, Midtown, The Donnas, and Panic! at the Disco, his career has known many iterations . Earlier this year he released the album American Love Story, a rock opera that tells the loosely autobiographical story of a young man named "Bo" who deals with themes of racial and sexual bigotry, reckoning, and redemption, paired with a walk down a musical memory lane of the '70s and '80s. Butch still prefers to record in one room, handling the engineering, mixing, and musical duties himself, just as he did on his first 4-track in the shack behind his family's home in rural Georgia.
Upstate New York is an odd place, with its mix of old Dutch Farmers, economically depressed towns, and a slew of aging hippies. This is especially true in the town of Woodstock, nestled in the Catskill Mountains; a quaint country town two hours north of New York City, with under six thousand residents and no traffic lights. I spent my pivotal years in Woodstock, and I've always had a love/hate relationship with the struggle and balance between the touristy rural Americana and '60s nostalgia. The multidimensional blend of creativity and salt of the earth people has always been in flux since the town's early history. A ton of musicians and studios have tucked themselves away as a refuge from the overcrowded rat race of New York City. It's also where Daniel James Goodwin decided to create his own music-making retreat. I sat down with Daniel in his studio, The Isokon, to talk about the environmental impact of working to tape, working with artists such as Bob Weir, Kaki King, Heather Woods Broderick, and working with ECM Records, as well as his life and what he says, "F*ck you" to.
Founding members of the band America, Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley, have kept the group America going 50 years, and this year sees the release of Half Century, a seven CD/one DVD box set of rare archival studio recordings of alternate mixes, demos and rehearsals. I dropped a line to Jeff Larson, a musician and America archivist, to talk about the projects he's been involved in for America Archives/America Records, including Half Century on Gonzo Multimedia, the Heritage series on Omnivore Recordings, Rhino's recent collections, and more.Feature photo: Dewey & Jeff
Decades ago I grabbed my soldering iron and whipped up this exact device – an adaptor to allow one to externally plug a 9-volt battery into a stompbox's power jack. Given that many pedals no longer feature a battery compartment, this type of adaptor can be a lifesaver. In the studio, I will...
Is it a modular sound design tool masquerading as a DAW, or is it a DAW acting as a modular instrument? Bitwig Studio blurs these boundaries, creating an environment where traditional linear time and clip-based arrangements coexist. Modularity weaves through all facets of this application, and full...
Based in Austin Texas, Electric & Company builds and restores boutique preamplifiers. The EC6 is a mono tube preamp based on the preamps from the Ampex 600 series reel-to-reel tape machines. The EC6 boasts +60 dB of gain, with Cinemag input and output transformers, pushing three stages with an EF86...
I admit it, I don't always feel like creating a separate aux channel to add parallel compression on my drum tracks. Enter BABY Audio's I Heart NY parallel compressor plug-in, a bus compressor that allows you to mix a dry source signal with the compressed signal. Simply defined, parallel compression...
If your studio is anything like mine, you see a variety of drums come through and sometimes the kick drum will not stay in place. Developed by drummer Will Butera with his dad Jay, KickBlock is a must have for every studio and gigging drummer. A simple, super lightweight foam (or natural cork)...
Senior Writer Dana Gumbiner covers the bulk of this major new software release from Universal Audio, but we've also asked our newest reviewer, John Radin, to comment from a guitarist's point of view. -SM Please don't call it a DAW! Universal Audio's new recording system LUNA is here, fresh out of...
SPL electronics is a 35-year-old German company that makes everything from the Vitalizer sweetener/equalizer to a well-regarded de-esser and desktop digital interfaces to mastering consoles and signal path controllers. Their model 1734 Mercury Mastering DAC is a red-faced, single space rack unit...
Colin McDowell of McDSP, and his gang of wickedly smart development minions, haven't been sitting back and complacently idling away since releasing the plug-in controlled, all analog APB-16 [Tape Op #134]. The company has recently announced their all-new APB-8 (half the analog processing of the...
At the time I am writing this, despite vastly different and confusing advice and regulations from governments around the world, almost all doctors and scientists agree that if you care about the people around you, you should wear a face covering to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. As we emerge...
DDMF is a German company that publishes two kinds of audio software: Outstanding signal processors and innovative utilities that no one else makes but should. Plugindoctor is one example of an invaluable tool. I purchased version 1.0 shortly after it was released, and have come to use it...
The Revelation II is MXL's newest offering from their Premium Studio microphone line. This large-diaphragm, continuously variable pattern tube mic features top-shelf components: Internal Mogami cabling, a hand-selected EF86 Pentode tube, and a dual gold-sputtered 6-micron diaphragm. The power...
I make purchases based on several factors, but often when I'm buying something for the studio it's primarily to fill a hole. I look for pieces that do something different than the gear I already have. In the past, I've had (and used) several inexpensive tube mic preamps and owned one very...
I love low end and I try to mix with a lot of power coming from that range. This is tough when your monitors and room start to lose clarity and tightness below 100 Hz. I have to consciously spend a little extra time working on my kick and bass tracks to hit the way I’d like because of the...
SSL has officially dived into the crowded sea of interface making with the intent of bringing a professional level of sound quality to music makers of all levels. The SSL 2 is a simple two input USB-C affair with facilities for playback via its rear-facing single headphone and stereo TRS monitoring...
The late Tommy LiPuma's career covered seven hit-making decades of music, and musician/writer/etc. Ben Sidran [father of Leo Sidran, Tape Op #135], who worked with Tommy extensively in the studio, does justice in telling the story of Tommy's life in this engrossing biography. From his upbringing in...
With the shift to digital recording and razor-thin budgets in recent decades, recording consoles have disappeared from many modern recording studios. In place of a 96-channel behemoth, a new studio may have a simple desk topped with a sleek DAW controller, or even just a mouse and keyboard. While...
There's something appealing about a two-band EQ. It implies a broad stroke – "just a bit of this and a pinch of that" – in a way that is optimistic, confident, and unfussy. Simple tools work particularly well in hybrid situations, like feeding Pro Tools sessions out to a console using hardware EQs...
The Hazelrigg Industries VDI is a single channel, all-triode, vacuum tube-based DI featuring the same circuit from the D.W. Fearn VT-I/F and VT-3. The VDI offers an uncomplicated design: Instrument Input, instrument Thru to amp, ground lift, an XLR output that runs at mic level, and an IEC...