Tag: gear

Recording equipment, musical instruments and music software.

Gesture-based Music Apps are Getting Good

I have been watching music mobile apps that harness accelerometer and gyroscope for a while. Many of these implementations have been pretty clumsy and toylike rather than offering a serious expression alternative that a serious musician/DJ might be tempted to use. This new $20 AirJ is looking really powerful. You can see it in use […]
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The Many Mysteries of Rudy Van Gelder

Rudy Van Gelder is considered to be the vital ‘fifth Beetle’ on a zillion of the best jazz records ever made. Though he considers himself strictly a recording engineer, the Van Gelder sound is as signature as any great musician’s. Have you ever mucked about trying to get his sound or even kinda sorta his […]
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The Cigar Box Synth

Back when I was a wee lad my Dad used to bring me empty cigar boxes to play with. I had dozens of them. Some were converted into garages for matchbox cars, some became building materials, others were used to store priceless assets like string and wires. When I was about the same wee age, […]
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Clavinova Love

I am a pretty serious piano snob so a lot of people have been surprised that I bought a Yamaha Clavinova about 6 months back. I came to this conclusion because I live in an apartment and I sometimes like to wake up at 3AM and play my little heart out. When I used to […]
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Microphone Love

I have come to realize that a healthy lust for classic microphones is something to be proud of.   It shows an appreciation for the quality of a time gone by. It indicates a romantic desire to hold a beautiful sound in one’s hand. It is one of the affinities that separates men from apes. When […]
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Nudge – a seriously fun browser synth

The subversive geniuses at Hobnox have just released one of the most musical browser based synths I have ever played. Nudge enables you to step-enter 8 sounds into a looping 4/4 grid. The grid is pentatonic instead of full chromatic but there is still a surprising amount of creative flexibility. It is as fun to […]
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In praise of the Juno 106 Librarian

The Roland Juno 106 is a true anolog-digital hybrid swiss army knife that invites deep experimentation like few other synths I have messed with. The single DC0 per voice makes a thin reedy sound on its own but boy can you fatten it up with lowpass filter and the ridiculously fat internal stereo chorus. I […]
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PZM live piano miking

I decided a while back that it would be fun to record my steady piano gig. I thought it would be good for my playing to listen to what I was doing after the fact and I also hoped that I just might capture the odd moment. I have a nice portable DAT machine but […]
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