Interviews
By Larry Crane
Not far outside of Seattle, Washington, there's a converted old barn out in the woods named Bear Creek Studio. It's been there for well over 40 years, making it one of the oldest continuously running residential studios in the world. Joe and Manny Hadlock, with help from their friends, built...
Interviews
Donn Landee's lengthy discography is a testament to his versatility and skill as an engineer. Landee worked for T.T.G. Studios...
Interviews
It's been a sad 13 years since the passing of Mark Linkous, the visionary behind the group Sparklehorse. In issue Read More →
Interviews
Mikko Gordon, operating out of London, England, is a vanguard engineer. He has an...
A compelling Brooklyn-based Pakistani composer, vocalist, and producer, Arooj Aftab's 2021 album, Vulture Prince, brought her voice and music a lot of attention, as well as a Grammy for Best Global Music Performance. Her recent collaboration, Love in Exile, with Shahzad Ismaily [Tape Op #151] and Vijay Iyer, was tracked and improvised live in the studio and is a beautiful work of art that deserves focused listening. She recently chatted with Lisa Machac, of Omni Sound Project, about her path in music and sound.
David Brown, along with his business partner Pavel Bazdyrev (aka Pasha), is the co-founder of Soyuz Microphones. In the past ten years, Soyuz has established themselves as one of the best condenser microphone brands in a crowded field. Uniquely, the microphones are manufactured in Russia. I had a chance to sit down and chat with David at the recent 2023 NAMM show in the quietest place at the show; a three story cement parking garage. In between Harley-Davidson motorcycles passing by, I got the story of how David went from being a touring musician to a mic maker.
In the mid-'40s, a new generation of musicians heralded the arrival of bebop. Here's why some of the most exciting jazz performances ever recorded still don't sound good, and how we might be able to fix it. In the long and vast history of jazz, Charlie Parker stands as one of its giants. The saxophonist, known as "Bird," along with trumpeter John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie helped invent bebop in the middle '40s, forever altering the musical language of jazz. A music characterized by fast and complex playing by small groups (in many ways unlike the big band swing era that preceded it), bebop's recorded legacy was truncated by the American Federation of Musicians ban, waged by its infamous president, James C. Petrillo. Petrillo wanted the record companies to pay royalties, and when they didn't comply he enforced a ban on recording for all union musicians, starting July 31, 1942. For this, Petrillo was lambasted from every conceivable corner of the entertainment business. The halt on recording dragged on – in September 1943, Decca and Capitol Records agreed to pay royalties. Over two years after it began, in November 1944, the Victor and Columbia labels likewise capitulated. Looking at the record sales evidence today, it shows that the labels themselves weren't very affected by the ban. In fact, due to the need for product to push, they scoured their vaults and ended up inventing the compilation album in the process. But a certain musical damage entailed – the earliest bebop music was simply never recorded.
Not far outside of Seattle, Washington, there's a converted old barn out in the woods named Bear Creek Studio. It's been there for well over 40 years, making it one of the oldest continuously running residential studios in the world. Joe and Manny Hadlock, with help from their friends, built this studio in 1978. Their son, Ryan Hadlock, has been engineering and producing from Bear Creek and all over the world for decades, with artists like Zach Bryan (including "Something Orange," a Grammy-nominated single in 2023 for Best Country Solo Performance), The Lumineers, Brandi Carlile, Vance Joy, The Black Heart Procession, Blonde Redhead, The Afghan Whigs, Stephen Malkmus [Tape Op #15], Gossip, and Ra Ra Riot. Ryan's story is a unique one, and, though I've known him for many years, I learned a lot more about him in this discussion.
In 2020, I had the pleasure of reviewing the Hazelrigg Industries VDI [Tape Op #48]; Earlier this year, Hazelrigg Industries released their latest creation; the 4DI. In the three years since I demoed the single channel VDI, I’m now working out of a very different studio in a much more dialed-in...
Baby Audio’s BA-1 is a reimagining of the cultish ‘80s analog synth, the Yamaha CS01, bringing with it some pure and authentic textures that are easy and intuitive to program. The CS01 was routinely used by some of Sweden’s most successful pop producers, and was also a staple of 1990s digital...
In issue #126 I reviewed Benson Amps' stereo Studio Tall Bird Spring Reverb, a wonderful piece of hardware that gets used a lot at Jackpot! Recording. The original Tall Bird has been discontinued, but a new iteration is arriving soon. It "sprang" from the Tall Bird All Tube Reverb, an amp...
Who doesn’t love Sony microphones? Their reputation is built on the C-37A, C-800G, and the C-38B; all of which deliver. I'd previously reviewed the C-100 series of mics [Tape Op #132] and was impressed by their quality, so I was curious to try out Sony's newest offering: the C-80 cardioid condenser...
The Carnaby 500 is a groundbreaking audio processor. Hands down, this device is stunning. At first glance, it looks like a three-band EQ – which it kind of is – but it's not like any equalizer I've touched before. When you boost a band, you're only boosting saturation. When you attenuate a band,...
It has been more than 20 years since I got my first original Copperphone microphone and wrote a review for Tape Op about it [Tape Op #42]. I fell in love with that microphone the moment I heard it, and I have used it on hundreds and hundreds of recordings since. Not to mention, I have put that...
The original Telefunken ELA M 251 tube-powered condenser mics were made for Telefunken by AKG in the early '60s – when Neumann had pulled their U 47 distribution from Telefunken – and were somewhat similar (circuit and component-wise) to AKG's popular C12 mics of the time. The 251 has long been...
It’s a good time to be an enthusiast of the classic Fairchild limiters of the past. Not all that long ago, there were no mass-market reproductions of the Fairchild 660 or 670, and only a smattering of less-than-convincing plug-ins. Nowadays, we have an abundance of hardware and software options to...
This fun little book is an 8-inch square, 16-page, hand-illustrated history of – as the subtitle says – "Studios of Seattle & Tacoma" in Washington State. Of the nine, I've worked out of three of these spaces and personally have a great affection for the SeaTac recording scene. Author Jackson Long...
As a writer, I try to be as transparent as I can when reviewing a piece of gear. I also feel compelled to include a bit of a backstory that shares what initially lead me to doing the review. Many know that I moved my studio, SoundShop370, from Manhattan to South Nashville a couple of years ago....
Built to work only with the McDSP APB ("analog processing box") units (APB-8, APB-16) [Tape Op #134], the KD1 Kinetic Drive is a plug-in that uses this interesting system. The APB essentially is a one space rackmount box that attaches to your computer's Thunderbolt and audio interface's clocking in...
A new, affordable, single rack unit channel strip, Rupert Neve Designs' Newton Channel isn’t a stripped-down version of their Shelford Channel [Tape Op #118] or a direct replacement for the more complex and discontinued Portico II Channel (which I own and reviewed in issue #82). The preamp in the...
For those of us who have dived headfirst into immersive mixing (Atmos or Sony 360RA), there comes a vexing moment where we realize that there is no simple way to apply bus compression for the mix glue we’ve become dependent upon in stereo. In an Atmos mix, our groove elements may be assigned to a...
There are many stereo field processors out there, but they are usually simply fixer tools or effects processors. Among the effect types, most of them do only one thing – meaning if you don't need that approach the plug-in is not applicable. Purchasing too many plug-ins to cover my main production...
The new Push 3 is finally here! I've been an Ableton Live DAW [Tape Op #143] user since version 1, and was an early adopter of both of the first two generations of Push hardware, so I was eager to test the surprising spec and feature bumps of the 3rd-gen Push 3, Ableton's grid-based...
During most of my adult life, the use of stompbox effects with my trumpet or my voice was frustrating, inconvenient, and unreliable, or some combination of these issues. I've wasted hours, days, and weeks playing around with various setups; Lo-Z to Hi-Z adapters, loop pedals with XLR inputs, vocal...
The first-generation Syntrx from Latvian synthesis maestros Erica Synths was a fantastic "reimagining" of the 1972 EMS Synthi AKS. The original Syntrx was a highly desirable analog synth with a limited production run of 1056 units (and a premium price tag of $3029 USD). Erica is back with the...
At some point, we all have heard enough of the never-ending “analog vs. digital” debate. It’s getting harder to argue when the digital side of recording continues to get better sonically. Even guys like me that started in the early 2000s have seen a massive evolution, as of late. Let’s face it,...
I watched and waited for over a year before I finally purchased the Steven Slate Audio VSX headphone mixing system. VSX is a set of over the ear, closed-back headphones and accompanying software (to use via your DAW) to “listen” in various virtual rooms and spaces. Some of the virtual rooms are...