I can’t help but start by referencing one of my favorite nerd pickup lines of all time. In Frasier, the geeky trekkie Noel purrs to his coworker Roz, “set phasers to stunning!” Alright, it’s a different kind of phaser- or is it? The two phasers have some strange overlap. In music and audio production, a …
We’ve all seen it. The guitarist who could be more accurately called a pedal collector with a guitar. The player who runs their instrument through so many layers of effects that it’s hard to know what is doing what, exactly. Let alone how the instrument sounded in the first place. Not for nothing, an entire …
Ah, the talk box. You can’t blame Peter Frampton. Somebody had to get their first and make the talk box their signature sound. It’s just like T-Pain with the auto-tune sound, or Daft Punk with their modulated robot thing. Any vocal effect is pretty much destined to fall in the hands of an artist searching …
Best Talk Boxes for Guitar, Keyboard, Synthesizer, and More Read More »
I’m a full-time producer, songwriter, and composer. I’ve worked on game soundtracks, musical theatre projects, and producing songwriters ranging from folk to pop to psychedelic. But I’m not going to lie to you- beneath it all, I will always be a punk. As a teenage in the mid-00s, skate punk was the first music I …
As a musician, you have a power that it’s easy to take for granted. When it comes down to it, music does something to people that nothing else can. No matter what other hobbies a person has, or what else they are into. Almost everyone loves music, and everyone has their own favorite music that …
I’m a British-American. I was born and raised in the US, and I’ve lived all over, from the Midwest to the Deep South. But my parents emigrated from England shortly before I was born. I feel this gives me a unique insider-outsider view of American culture. I find myself comparing and contrasting America and UK …
If I may say so myself, I consider myself more qualified than most to write about MIDI. I’m a producer and songwriter, and I work in a lot of genres and styles these days. Indie, jazz, blues, rock, soundtracks… But music all goes back to MIDI for me. I developed my writing and arranging chops …
One of my favorite parts about my job is that I never know what’s coming next. I’m a freelance musician, and I take projects and gigs as they come. It can be kind of stressful, and I know that a lot of people would not be happy to live this way- there’s a lot of …
Why do we like vinyl records so much? And don’t say we don’t, because we do. Nobody would have believed you ten or twenty years ago if you told them that in 2019, vinyl records would outsell CDs for the first year since 1986. Even though vinyls are more primitive, fussier, more limited. Even though …
Playing a tube amp is sort of like listening to your favorite album on vinyl, or driving a 1966 Mustang to work. It’s not the simple way, or the cheap way. It’s probably not the most efficient or even effective way. But it’s the classy way. Certain things are timeless- even if they are messy …
