Interviews
By Photograph Harrison, John Baccigaluppi, Larry Crane
As a member of the Talking Heads and forming The Modern Lovers with Jonathan Richman, Jerry Harrison would have a career of note if this was all he'd done. But as a successful producer over the last four decades, he's helmed albums for Violent Femmes, Crash Test Dummies, The Verve Pipe, Live,...
Interviews
Recording and mixing much of the Talking Heads catalog would be one achievement, but then throw in tracking some of the earliest hip-h...
Interviews
A pure obsession with sound drove a young woman from her rural Italian home to the UK and into London's recording studios. A r...
Interviews
A producer, songwriter, and a founding member of the alternative pop band Caveboy,...
Interviews
When I heard my colleagues Steve Rosenthal [Tape Op#66] and Michael Graves [#125] had...
When people hire me to mix their songs, I frequently come across situations where we are not using the same terminology for the sources clients are giving me to work from. Yes, sometimes one word can mean several different things, but generally the consensus among audio professionals is fairly clear. So, I started making a list of terms to help us all out.
As an electronic instrument pioneer, and one of the designers of the Roland TR-808 drum machine, Don Lewis had an irreversible impact on the trajectory and sound of popular music. On November 6th, 2022, Mr. Lewis peacefully passed away at the age of 81. It is an honor to help remember him now.
I'm sure a lot of you are asking "who was Herb Deutsch and what does he have to do with rock 'n' roll?" The short answer is sometimes it's the people behind the scenes that change the course of history.
Russ Gary is a self-professed countrified rocker and a recording legend who is still working and actively making original music today. Whether working at Wally Heider Studios, Fantasy Studios, DSR [Doug, Stu, and Russ] Productions, or as an independent producer, Russ has always been involved in various forms of popular music production. He was an "original rock 'n' roller" who studied the guitar stylings of Elvis Presley's Scotty Moore, and, later, was fortunate to be in San Francisco during the late '60s and early '70s in a thriving Bay Area music scene. Having engineered timeless albums by Creedence Clearwater Revival, tracked fabled sessions with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young for their classic album, Déjà Vu, mixed Norman Greenbaum's 1969 smash hit "Spirit in the Sky," and much more, he has many great stories to tell. Later in the '70s, Russ produced several Creedence-related side projects, lots of music for Fantasy Records, and many live-remote recordings with the DSR Productions remote truck. Add in 20-plus years mixing audio in the television business, and one starts to see the real depth of his long and very interesting résumé. Over the course of the lingering pandemic, Russ kindly allowed me a rare opportunity to conduct this phone interview.
Before the widely known SSL 4000 G and E series consoles, Solid State Logic built six 4000 B series consoles. They have modeled the entire signal path of a hardware channel strip from the 4000 B, and made it available as a plug-in. Some of the unique features of this channel strip emulation include...
Like many home recordists, I work out of the smallest bedroom in my house: a glorious 10 x 10 x 8-foot room. Palatial, it is not. My “control room” dimensions would reduce even the hardiest acoustic consultant to tears. After a few frustrating experiences of working up a decent mix, only to hear it...
There will surely come a time when we no longer use ADAT Lightpipe cables as a digital signal carry method. Until that day, the ADAT protocol seemingly remains the preeminent affordable and painless way to upgrade many project studio interfaces’ I/O count. Though in the box mixing and overdub-style...
I found this Love My Switches’ web store while searching for aluminum replacements for the sticky, degraded soft-touch rubber vulcanized knobs on my Arturia MicroBrute [Tape Op #106] synth. Many manufacturers have used this style of rubber coating on gear for years. However, after time and use, the...
Initially, I was turned onto Crucial Audio via their excellent Studio-Nugget Tube Delay [Tape Op #147]. I love that piece of gear and all the magic sauce it imparts. Knowing what I know about that unit, and how passionate owner/ designer/builder Steve Kollander is about tube gear, I was intrigued...
Following the successful launch of their Al Schmitt Signature plug-in [Tape Op #145], Leapwing Audio recently released a Joe Chiccarelli Signature plug-in, offering 11 different profiles that emulate Chiccarelli’s [#14] signal chains for kick, snare, bass, vocals, etc. Each profile has a unique GUI...
I’ve been looking for a hardware compressor for tracking purposes, so when I saw the attractive price of Lindell Audio’s LiN76, I decided to grab one. I’ve owned a few 1176-style hardware clones, other similar hardware compressors, and (of course) the plug-ins, but I’m not going to do a...
Every time one moves into a new studio space, which I have done several times for various reasons, we’re presented with new challenges in treating the room sonically. My new studio is one large space, primarily for mixing, but there will undoubtedly be the need for tracking at times. My last room...
There are not a ton of superlatives to use when reviewing a power conditioner – it’s well built and effective, or it is not. The Radial Power-2 surge suppressor / power conditioner is both and has a couple of additional useful features to boot. [See LC’s review of the Power-1 in Tape Op #147.] Why...
This steampunk-inspired plug-in certainly lives in its own world. Featuring “super rad steampunk GUI because traditional gear is lame and is for nerds,” opening up the STEAMDRIVER is a glimpse into a film about crazy equipment that can destroy sounds, and that’s exactly what this plug-in can do. In...
I love the sound of spring reverbs and have three stereo units (two Demeter [Tape Op #21] and one Benson Amps [#126]) in my racks already. So, when my old pal, Ted Miller from Satan’s Pilgrims (we made many surf LPs at Jackpot! way back), dropped off the Surfybear Reverb Studio Edition, I was...
As an owner of an API 1608 console [Tape Op #81] loaded with a bunch of API 550As, 550bs, and 560s [#26], I’m pretty familiar with API’s EQs in general, and I think they sound great. My one slight gripe has been that I often want to cut or boost a frequency between the stepped frequencies on the...
I have a polarizing position regarding monitors. Either I really dig them (when my mixes sound good across many sources post-mix), or I simply don’t have time for them. I also think we can all agree that when we like what we’re getting back from a set of speakers, we’re inspired, keep pushing, and...