Music and Recording Features

Dave Mason, the British guitarist/vocalist who passed away at 79 on April 19, conceded that some of his best-known songs fared better with other people's voices. "I may not be the best interpreter of certain songs of mine," he told me during a phone interview in 2018. "For example, I feel like Cocker's got the definitive version of 'Feelin' Alright?'"

Not long ago, the return of vinyl records was still being labeled a fad—a momentary fascination that given the convenience of the digital world would soon fade. Then around 2022, when vinyl outsold CDs for the first time since 1987, minds began to change.

You could say that guitar phenom Derek Trucks grew up in a musical family. His late uncle, drummer Butch Trucks, was a cofounder of The Allman Brothers Band, and his younger brother Duane drums for Widespread Panic. Derek's jam-centric DNA shaped the sound found in the grooves of Future Soul (Fantasy), the sixth studio album from Tedeschi Trucks Band/

Each side of the one-sheet lyrics insert accompanying Squeeze's latest LP, Trixies (Love/BMG), has been divvied up into three equal columns that can be folded over to replicate a 4" × 11½" nightclub menu. Subtitled "Trixies Concoctions Menu," the insert conjures the theme of the 13-track song cycle that comprises Trixies, whose storyline traces several scenes set in and around a fictional nightclub.

If you are at all familiar with the Netflix sci-fi/horror phenomenon known as Stranger Things, you've heard its foreboding, pulsating theme music dozens of times. The familiarity of that signature Stranger synth bed should in turn lead your ingrained sound-sense memory to conjure the music of Tangerine Dream, the pioneering German electronic band.

Once and forever iconoclast Vernon Reid, the Britain-born guitarist for iconic American band Living Colour, is perpetually in pursuit of sonic excellence, regardless the point of entry. "A lot of different things have attracted me—everything from gentle breeze to thunder and lightning," Reid told me during a recent Zoom interview.

If not for the skill level of the producers and engineers who ensure recordings are able to get to the finish line, we may never have heard some of the best music of the past century-plus sound as good as it does. In Part 3 of our three-part Studio Confidential interview series, Mike Mettler talks with Elliot Scheiner, who has worked with Eagles, Steely Dan, Van Morrison, and many, many others, about what made him want to become a producer, his favorite album of those he’s worked on (it'll probably surprise you), and how he views surround-sound mixing.