Welcome to issue #160 of Tape Op.

What are the personal rewards of making and recording music? Or, maybe more tellingly, what are the rewards of recording other people's music?

Steve Albini & Lil BUB — Mark Pallman from Lil BUB's Big SHOW

In this issue, with Kyle Nicolaides' "What is Success in Music?" piece, we see how misunderstanding what success and fame truly are (or could be) can sometimes be debilitating. In John Baccigaluppi's "One Degree" End Rant, we get a perspective on how our day-to-day recording studio work can, at times, become intertwined with important albums we've always admired. In our interview with Mike Bridavsky, he discusses taking a few years doing less recording to take care of his special cat, Lil BUB, and coming back to the studio with a renewed sense of purpose.

Our pride and our egos can get wrapped up in any activity we get involved in as humans. As we move though life, it's important to look for the aspects of our activities that we take pleasure in and feel proud about. I love helping a great album get recorded or mixed and eventually out into the world for people to hear, and I hope that I bring something special to my work that the artist appreciates. There's always something to learn from any studio session, and it makes me feel better to have strengthened my collection of technical, musical, and psychological skills to use in the future. I can look at a stack of albums, all of which I worked on, and feel proud that I have worked on records that I would have likely gone to a record store to purchase if this hadn't become my career.

None of this has anything to do with top-of-the-charts successes, winning major awards, or lots of money rolling in. Knowing that I've enriched a music fan's listening experience, inspired someone to record themselves, and simply getting to be a part of the amazing world of music is reward enough for me.

— Larry Crane, editor & Founder