TOC Intro | No. 160
Intro / TOC #160
by Larry Crane
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...
Columns
by Larry Crane
Do You Really Need to be "Doing It Like a Pro"?
by Larry Crane
My recording career did not begin in a professional studio. It began in high school, with a pile of cassette decks, cables, homemade oscillators, Casio keyboards, and cheap microphones strewn...
Intro / TOC #159
by Larry Crane
In this issue, we present the second of our interviews with recording engineer and producer Donn Landee, as first seen in issue #157. To say I was thrilled to get Donn into Tape Op is an...
Intro / TOC #158
by Larry Crane
Every issue of Tape Op comes together in slightly different ways. John Baccigaluppi and I will juggle different interviews to run, looking for some magical balance of genres, styles of recording, and...
When is a Mix Done?
by Larry Crane
I sat down to try and write an End Rant describing how to know when a mix is done, and then I became stuck. Everyone’s experience with this can be different, so I dropped a line to some...
Are You Being Lazy?
by Larry Crane
Somewhere along the line, when working on any recording project, there are points where the "real work" needs to be done. Real work, to me, is the time where intense listening skills are brought...
Intro / TOC #157
by Larry Crane
In this issue, we were lucky to speak with friends, family, and bandmates of the late Mark Linkous, aka Sparklehorse, about his recently released posthumous album, Bird Machine. In 1999, we...
The DynoPopper X-10
by Larry Crane
Photo by Roman Sokal, courtesy of Audio Crowbar Dynamics. Having recently spent more time working on the Tape Op Gear Reviews section of this magazine, one thought keeps creeping into my mind and...
Intro / TOC #156
by Larry Crane
As an adjunct to the End Rant this issue, I should explain something about myself and how I work in the studio; something that will likely seem incongruous with my position as Tape Op's founder and...
Not So Oblique Strategies
by Larry Crane, Garrett Haines
In 1975, Brian Eno [Tape Op #85] and multimedia artist Peter Schmidt published their first set of Oblique Strategies: Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas. These cards work as creativity resets,...
Intro / TOC #155
by Larry Crane
While brainstorming the "Not So Oblique Strategies" End Rant for this issue, I was reminded of a very simple, but truthful (and not so oblique), thought I've been trying to convey via Tape Op for...
Intro / TOC #154
by Larry Crane
In 1996, not long before I opened the doors at Jackpot! Recording Studio, I had to decide what format we would track to. I had been using a Tascam 8-track tape deck for the previous couple of years...
What the F#ck is “Industry Standard”?
by Larry Crane, Garrett Haines
After receiving negative feedback regarding her release, a talented artist I’d worked with dropped me a line. Apparently a random critic of her album had declared that “the song was...