Aaron Espinoza: Earlimart, Elliott Smith, The Breeders and more

BY SARA ESSEX, ADAM SELZER

Drum Tuning: Drum Tuning: The Studio Perspective

BY CHELSEA MOSHER, GARRETT HAINES

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 drum tuning — including drummers! Many studio sessions involve drum heads that are covered with muffles and drenched in reverb, resulting in a sound evocative of cardboard boxes being hit with spoons. Although I've been playing drums for a long time, it was only in the past several years that I've gotten a proficient handle on tuning. The following provides a primer aimed at anyone who wants to capture better drum sounds without taking years of trial and error. Since the topic of drum tuning can quickly expand to materials, construction designs, and physics, I've tried to limit the scope of this discussion to a recording situation. I've listed a few resources at the end of this piece for those wishing additional detail.

John Schumann: Behind the Gear with Schumann Electronics

BY DAWN LANDES

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. Schumann walked in the very first day Carl Myers opened the store six years ago with a Two Face Fuzz in his hand and asked if they would carry it. They did. Soon after that he got a call from Scott Minor (of Sparklehorse) who had seen the pedal at Main Drag. Minor has become a huge supporter of Schumann Electronics and helped spread the word overseas to several influential bands, including Portishead and Radiohead. You can hear the Two Face Fuzz signature on Radiohead's latest, Hail to the Thief. These days the Schumann Line is in high demand and he can barely keep on top of the orders. Now he builds the craziest pedal of all: The PLL.

múm: The Best of Both Worlds: Mixing Digital and Analog in Iceland

BY ÉANNA CUNNANE

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 electronic nor acoustic — has become startlingly unique. For live shows they augment PowerBook grooves with guitars, banjo, accordion, melodicas, bells, xylophone, trumpet, strings, and musical saw. Their recently-released third album, Summer Make Good, adds harp, Stroh violin, and North Atlantic gales to this mix, and it should be required listening for anyone looking to create and capture hitherto unheard sounds in any genre of music. I spoke to Örvar Smárason from the group about the making of the album, which was conceived in Berlin, recorded in an old lighthouse keeper's house by Orri Jonson of Slowblow and mixed in Sundlaugin, Sigur Rós' swimming pool studio.