Here ya go…

A catalog of rants on the gear I use and make, including the studio are here.
Specific Instruments Used On Albums
Studio Details

But can we talk? Can we talk?

Jeez man, not another rant?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it really doesn’t make that much difference for what I do. Yeah, maybe it makes a difference for the true ‘virtuosi’, but frankly, I’ve always had to be a ‘ham and egger’ switching between so many instruments on so many gigs that I guess I just learned to make do with whatever was about. The funny thing is that, I have gone through periods ‘where only the best will do’. And the interesting thing is that I always ended up gravitating back to the el-cheapo-s. They’re just more comfy. And, at the end of the day, I realized that I sound pretty much the same no matter what I play. What does seem to matter to me, with my wee tiny little hands, is […]

Nice Cuts is, unlike my other albums to date, a compilation. It was not without it’s ‘production’ aspects, however.

The fourteen previously released songs were selected based on a fan voting process. The versions you hear on Nice Cuts are slightly different than those on their original releases. This is of necessity for a couple of reasons:

This is meant as a central filing cabinets for more thoughts I have on the whole production business, including DIY vs. ‘pro studio’, ‘live vs. loops’ and various ‘how do you do that’ techniques that people ask about from time to time. I want to come back here and flesh these out as time permits.

If you’re looking for a link to the post on playing techniques. It’s here

But First A Sub-Rant On ‘Loops Vs. Real’
I almost never use ‘loops’ or MIDI ‘patterns’. I’m either thrilled or annoyed when people tell me my stuff sounds ‘mechanical’, but a lot of the time I want it to do that so I guess I’m doing OK. The only exception is for moments of intentional ‘sound design’. For example, I’ve become quite a devotee of ‘scratching’ so that sort of thing shows up here and there (eg. ‘Power’ on Beautiful Sounds.) But I never quantise, auto-tune, comp, loop, step-record otherwise ‘patch together’ sounds. If I can’t physically play it, I […]

STUDIO I: The Wiring

When I bought my house, I realized that there was no way I could afford to put in a proper studio ‘room within a room’ of proper size for really good acoustics right away. On a different track, my house has a crawlspace. When I went under the house to run a network cable between two rooms I decided, since I had to be down there anyway, to create structured cabling throughout the entire house so that every house could have Ethernet (I’d had very bad performance issues with WiFi.) Now after living there for a few weeks I realized that every room has it’s own unique sound and I decided that, since I already had cabling in place, I’d add audio and digital lines to each room. It turns out that it’s not that hard to expand lo-z audio, SP/DIF and lightpipe connections. This gave me the ability to use each room as either:

a) A place to record; each room having a ‘special sound’

b) The ability […]

I get a number of questions re. what I play and how I do things. This article is basically a list of the instruments I play, the songs you’d hear them on and some links to more information on them.

KEYBOARDS

Kimball Upright Player Piano. I got this from a girlfriend who owed me money. When she walked out she left me a note saying I should take it in lieu of payment. Seriously. But a piano is a good thing to have; even a crappy piano. I had it tuned by a friend who remarked, “Well I’d say sixty two or three notes sound OK. That’s not a bad average.” 😀 That said, there’s something nice about feeling the sound as you play… and not having to wait for some electric device to ‘boot’. Good, bad or indifferent, there’s nothing like a real instrument.

All the synthesized sounds you hear are various pieces of software played from a keyboard directly into the computer. These include Native Instruments, Inc. B4, FM8 and Kontakt; […]