The tape was already shedding when I got it. A 7-inch reel labeled in ballpoint, “HILDA GARMAN / MIXES 2 / DO NOT PLAY ON QUARTER TRACK.” Whoever wrote that note knew exactly what would happen. Side one came off the heads with a sound like a cat being stepped on, and about ninety seconds […]

Most of what I know about backing up a session I learned the hard way, well past midnight, watching a drive spin up and make a sound I’d never heard it make before. That session was a remix of a Hilda Garman track I’d been chopping for three weeks. The drive died halfway through the […]

I rebuilt my master template last month. New plugin folders, cleaner bus naming, what I thought was a smarter signal flow. It crashed on load twice. The 2019 template, the one I put together when I still had the Hilda Garman remix stems spread across three external drives, opened without a single missing-plugin dialog. So […]