Music and Recording Features

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.

Producers and engineers are the human engines that drive and shape the sound of the recordings we know and love—as well as the ones we've yet to hear. In Part 2 of our three-part Studio Confidential interview series, Mike Mettler talks with Sylvia Massy, who has worked with Prince, Jason Isbell, Tool, and many, many others, about what elements make a hit record, what album made her want to become a producer, and why Prince was such a, shall we say, tortured genius.

If you really want to know how your favorite albums came to be, you can't go wrong talking with the men and women who are in the studio day in and day out with the artists—i.e., the producers and engineers. So we're doing exactly that. In Part 1 of our Studio Confidential interview series—there will be three parts this week, with perhaps more to follow—Mike Mettler talks with Chuck Ainlay, who has worked with Peter Frampton, Mark Knopfler (and Dire Straits), George Strait, and many, many others—about his production philosophy and who inspired him to get behind the board in the first place.

If you find yourself in Monaco on a Sunday night, make your way to La Note Bleue, a rant and music bar on the beach by the Avenue Princesse Grace. There, you're likely to find a legendary world/fusion guitarist sitting in with a group of young jazz musicians eager to cut heads with the acknowledged maestro of inner awareness and otherworldly spirits.

Was it something in the air, something in the water? Cosmically inspired by the stars and the moon? Or maybe the devil was finally claiming his own as rock music in all its variants was unassailably ascendant.

John Michael Osbourne was obsessed with the Beatles. Better known by the sobriquet "Ozzy," the cofounding lead singer of Black Sabbath who later turned uber-successful solo artist and still later became a reality TV star was deeply in love with the Fab Four. Osbourne passed away on July 22, 2025, at age 76.

Outside of Vincent Van Gogh, Brian Wilson had the most infamous—and ultimately the most valuable—left ear in the world. Wilson—the chief architect of countless Beach Boys pop classics, who passed away at age 82 on June 11, 2025—lost the hearing in his right ear at an early age. One could reasonably argue that he only ever heard all the sonic masterpieces he constructed, for that quintessential California band he cofounded, in mono.