The adage "garbage in garbage out" takes on added meaning when it comes to recording drums. An out of tune drum can ruin any recording session. Unfortunately, very few people know the basics of...
I first met John Tchicai when I recorded his 1995 album, Love is Touching. I was several days into the project when I learned that, among others, he had played with John Lennon, Albert Ayler and...
The debut album from New York's Interpol, Turn on the Bright Lights, was one of the most successful independent rock albums in recent years. The band's brooding, atmospheric guitar rock has invited...
Dave Mattacks is arguably one of the world's best drummers. His recording credits include: Joan Armatrading, Mary Chapin-Carpenter, Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, Brian Eno, George Harrison, Jethro Tull,...
Anticon is a collectively owned record label based in Oakland, California. It produces well- known avant hip-hop records, financially supports its divergent artists and is
Cecile Schott grew up like most of us, in a sleepy suburb where teenage doldrums are fended off in garage bands and carefully arranged mix tapes populated by the Pixies, Sonic Youth and My Bloody...
The Icelandic group Múm started off as a four piece mixing inventive but orthodox electronica with acoustic instruments. Now they're a three-piece, and their music - neither wholly...
Rudy Van Gelder's legend looms large, yet he has avoided most interviews throughout his 50-plus years in the recording biz. He has never discussed his techniques, and even in the following...
John Schumann makes crazy pedals. He makes them 10 to 12 hours a day, every day, in a shop at the back of Main Drag Music, a great independent store near Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn....
Think your one vote doesn't count for much? Around 500 votes in Florida swayed the 2000 presidential election — a margin of .03% of the state population — 1 in 3000! The American people...
I'll just say this right up front, there's no doubt in my mind that the PMD670 is the next generation portable recorder. The PMD670 records directly to Compact Flash in WAV, Broadcast WAV, MP2 or MP3...
Loops, loops and more loops. The Essential Rhythm DVD sample set crams in 322 drum loops in addition to another 200 rhythm combo, acoustic guitar, bass, percussion, and one-shot samples. Riding on the...
The human throat, unlike many instruments in the studio, is usually the one that gets the least amount of care and can end up taking the most abuse. Many times I've seen people blow their throat out...
Attending the yearly Winter NAMM show in Anaheim is like walking into the largest music store in the world... times 10. The whole convention center is full of musical instruments, recording gear,...
The TG Channel is yet another great piece in the Chandler TG series. It is a single channel, one rack space unit with the same mic pre found in the Chandler TG-2 pre, combined with a three-band EQ....
When one hears the name SSL, the first thing that comes to mind is a big bucks console. Now that there is some kind of rackmount version of every other large format console's mic pres or channel...
I have to admit, I wanted to hate this unit. I realized that my prejudice came from my experience with a market that makes outrageous claims every day, and rarely does a unit come along that lives up...
I've been wanting a couple channels of API preamps for a while, but put off by the "commitment" API's frame system represents to me, I've never done so. However, Andy Hong steered a pair of API's 7600...
This mic is a miniature condenser intended as a lapel mic for broadcasting. When I was a student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, there were a lot of these microphones floating around...
Just when you think that life couldn't get any sweeter, along comes Peavey to put the Pro into its groundbreaking Kosmos boom box, creating the next wave of over-the-top and under-the-bottom bass...
Until a couple of years ago, I did nearly all my mixing using headphones. My reason for this approach was almost entirely economics-driven; usually one to maximize the bang/buck equation, I, like many...
A few colleagues of mine had mentioned using the ART Pro VLA compressors for getting crunchy drum sounds, so when I heard ART had a new compressor coming out, I wanted to give it a review. This two-...
Leave it to Hosa, the audio industry's clear leader in coming up with innovative ways to mold plastic around wire, to come up with this family of ingenious products: short IEC power cables with a...
I first became interested in the KMS 105 condenser mic at TapeOpCon 2004 in New Orleans when both Ian MacKaye of Fugazi and The Evens along with Don Zientara of Inner Ear studios, mentioned it as one...
The Green Bullet, as you likely know, is designed as a mic for harmonica players. You plug it into a guitar amp, and there's your classic blues harp sound. I don't play harmonica or even know anyone...
The T.C. Electronic System 6000 is as high-end as it gets. Regardless of whether it's a piece of gear that is appropriate for your particular recording set up, there are several innovations that are...
