About Me

Let me tell you a little about myself and my background.

I’m Glyn Tucker

I began as a Pop-rock musician in a band called The Gremlins in the late sixties.

We were lucky to have had a #2 hit with “The Coming Generation” in 1966, just beaten to the coveted #1 spot by The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine.

I was singer-songwriter-guitarist in the band and by the mid seventies had quit playing gigs and started building a professional recording studio in my home town Auckland, New Zealand. It became well-known over the next 20 years or so as Mandrill Recording Studios.

We started out as a demo studio doing 4-track snapshot demos for Kiwi groups like Split Enz, Streettalk, Human Instinct, Midge Marsden and others. With no formal sound recording tuition available in those early years, my contemporaries and I learned our craft the hard way; by experimenting, making mistakes and experimenting again. We were still many years away from recording digital audio.

In order to pay the bills I fell into writing and producing jingles for advertisers, and over a 21 year period recorded more than 200 or so of them. Regardless of accusations of “selling out” these jingle gigs became an excellent vehicle for plying my trade and honing my skills, whilst getting paid doing it! I was then able to apply these skills when recording and producing groups and artists on my own record labels that followed.

I set up Mandrill Records and later Reaction Records as an outlet for original talent to get their music out to the public. One of those young talents was an 18 year-old rock singer and his band that went by the name, Russ Le Roq….real name Russell Crowe. (you may have heard of him as a promising actor)

Alongside our music production my fellow engineers and I worked on post-production sound for NZ films and TV shows. Amongst them were Once Were Warriors, TV shows like Hercules, and Xena -The Warrior Princess featuring Lucy Lawless, a local lass made good on world TV screens.

Over the 21 years period that I was owner of Mandrill Studios we chalked up 22 Gold Albums, 3 Platinum albums, some of which were on our own labels and some recorded for major and independent labels who hired our expertise.

Some of the artists we worked with included Split Enz, Little River Band, Alastair Riddell, Citizen Band, Ardijah, Dave Dobbyn, Shona Laing, The Exponents, The Mockers, Satellite Spies, David Hasselhoff, Kiri TeKanawa, Carl Doy, and many many others.

International producers and engineers who visited and worked at our studio included, John Boylan, Kim Fowley, Tim Palmer, Jay Lewis, Ernie Rose, Graeme Myhre, Mark Moffat, Bruce Lynch, Paul Streekstra, Dave McArtney, Harry Lyon, Dave Marrett, Jaz Coleman, and so many others….

I can say without a doubt that I learned a lot from all of these talented people; much more than they ever learned from me. I guess that over a 21 year period running a fully pro studio operation you definitely get to know a thing or two…..  …secret techniques these pro’s use on a day to day basis to give their recordings that special “something” that makes platinum and gold albums.

From time to time I intend to write about some of these very special techniques and share them with you right here on the Recording Digital Audio blog.

The stuff I’ll be sharing with you does not originate in the classroom, or from a textbook. Instead, I am talking about the stuff that comes off the recording studio floor, and from the producer-engineer’s chair in a sweaty control-room at 4 in the morning, with the air-con broke, when the mix is not working because of a badly recorded vocal track!

These secrets emerged from the blood on the studio floor….(probably from the producer trying to cut his wrists)

Modern recording processes, including recording digital audio, have changed considerably since those pioneering days and nights I spent at Mandrill Studios. However, the laws of physics never change, so no matter what medium or format you are recording with today, these secrets are just as valid as the day they were first used on hit records; perhaps 20 years ago.

I hope I can make your journey a little easier and smooth the way for you in your quest to produce the next smash hit recording that will take the world by storm.

Or perhaps just to make your next demo a work better, or perhaps even a work of art of the highest quality for the listening pleasure of those of similar taste.

No matter that you may be working out of a small, poorly equipt home recording studio, without proper acoustic treatment, and no sound-proofing……the principles you will learn from Recording Digital Audio will help you get the best out of what you’ve got and make a real difference to your end result.

Happy sound recording

Glyn Tucker