Back in the early to mid-aughts, as music delivery was rapidly changing, I often used to ask two questions of musicians I met: One was, "How do you find new music, and what is it about a new artist...
A dozen years is quite a lifetime for studio headphones, especially ones used for artist monitoring. Joseph Lemmer’s 2012 review [Tape Op #91] of the Monoprice 8323 DJ-style headphones...
The buildout of my commercial studio building is still in progress (ugh), but over the next couple months I’m looking forward to completing my Nashville home studio (also ugh). Long story short,...
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I’ve come to the conclusion that recording studios don’t really make money. I’m not about to discuss the actual numbers of what my place, Jackpot! Recording Studio, brings in and...
After the internet came along and made sharing of information easier, I noticed an interesting trend. Maybe it's because of that misguided impulse of "doing it the right way" that beginners attempt to...
For 25 years, I have owned and run a commercial business, Jackpot! Recording Studio, in Portland, Oregon. During this time, I have developed a set of particular ideas of how to present my studio...
I've suffered through half a dozen home and studio moves over the past eight years. The moves have been challenging, to say the least, and two sources of frustration have been ISPs and wireless LANs....
I do a fair amount of one-on-one remote "teaching," many times working with folks running small studios, as well as a wide range of home setups. It's always fun to face this educational challenge, as...
As we all know, aging ears and sustained exposure to high SPL (sound pressure level) can lead to permanent hearing loss, chronic tinnitus, or both. I’m at the point in my music-making endeavors...
In 2023, I sold my Boston studio to Brian Charles, whose Zippah Recording facility was destroyed in a 2021 fire. Brian shared Zippah for many years with longtime Tape Op contributor Pete Weiss [Tape...
I’ve been fairly obsessed with Promises, an album by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, and the London Symphony Orchestra that came out in 2021. Maybe "obsessed" is a strong word, but I put it on...
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...
I've written here before that I own dozens of cordless power tools from Bosch, Milwaukee, and Ryobi for the never-ending list of projects around the house, inside the garage, out on the dock, and of...
