Tape Op-The Book

Tape Op magazine is absolutely amazing. I have paged through a ton of recording magazines, and Tape Op truely captures the spirit of DIY recording. For those of you not familiar with the magazine, it's a bi-monthly magazine filled with interviews of producers, engineers, musicians who have recorded their own albums, all in the DIY spirit. Very few of the people use hard drive based recording equipment, Pro Tools isn't praised as the god of record producing, and they never EVER tell you that your method is wrong. In fact, they encourage off the wall tactics. Those of you who record drum sets with 2 Radio Shack mics as overheads and a set of headphones pluged into a Line-In input for a kick drum mike will love this magazine.

I've been recieving the magazine for a little over a year now, and I cherish every issue I receive. They are invaluable tools for the home recording scene. The other day I was poking around their website when I stumbled across their list of past issues. It turns out that the first 12 issues are no longer available. At first I was a bit discouraged because they had some great articles as well as some great interviews with the likes of Steve Albini and other pioneers in the DIY recording industry. To my surprise however, I read that the first 12 issues were compiled into book form, and I immediately ordered a copy of "Tape-Op the Book".

Yesterday I recieved my book and I haven't put it down since. My mind has been blown away with every look at it. I haven't had the chance to sit down and read it cover to cover, but I did read a few articles. It includes everything from how to make great recordings on 4 track recorders to how to build your own microphone tube pre-amp. Some of the highlights for me so far have been the interview with Steve Albini and an article on microphones including detailed descriptions of a few popular and lesser known models.

Article Author: Andy

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