Gear

Recording can be intimidating at first, but you really only need a few basic tools to get started! We see images of these major recording studios and they look like command centers on a space station, but most of those big expensive pieces of gear have been replicated digitally to near perfection. They are now no more than a piece of software you load on your computer and voila! Recording studio!

  If you plan to record vocals or any acoustic instruments you will need a microphone. Microphones range widely in quality and function and it’s the place I would recommend investing the most your budget allows. In the world of microphones, you do generally get what you pay for. You can use all the studio wizardry in the world but it’s really hard to get audio to sound good if it wasn’t recorded w

    Wait, why do I need headphones? Headphones are essential for two main reasons, monitoring (listening to yourself while you’re recording along with any other tracks you may have in your project), and sound quality.   Monitoring If you record using a microphone and monitor yourself without headphones you will likely get feedback. AHHH! Your microphone will be trying to listen to y

  An Audio Interface allows you to connect your instrument and/or microphone directly to your computer. Some are designed just for electric guitars, basses, and other instruments that plug-in; others allow you to also plug in a microphone. Technically you can record into your computer using your computer’s built-in microphone, but the quality of this is not ideal. If you want to record anythi

Over the course of the time I’ve spent teaching guitar, I’ve found that very little about the anatomy of the electric guitar seems quite as mystifying to most newcomers as those little rectangles under the strings. A good chunk will know that they’re called pickups, but that’s about where most newcomers’ knowledge begins to dry up.  While it’s true that understanding pickups isn’t as i

If you’ve been making music with other people recently, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard the term audio interface thrown around quite a bit. Increases in digital recording software have made audio interfaces more effective tools than ever, and the climate of social distancing brought on by the still persisting pandemic had made audio interfaces a more important part of music making than eve

  Buying your first ever guitar can be intimidating. There’s a lot out there to choose from, some of them are quite pricey, and it’s hard to know what it is you’re looking for, especially when you’re new to the instrument. I was there myself once, saving up my eight-grade allowance and cat sitting for my neighbors to try and afford a guitar that ended up being picked primarily bas

In the second edition of How Do I Get THAT Tone, we’re going to examine the gear setups of several of my favorite guitarists. We’re going to go over the guitars, amps, and pedals of some truly wonderful players and investigate how you can imitate their distinctive sound yourself. If interest continues, we may see more of these coming. I’d again like to thank Steve Barber for coming up with this id

In this piece, we’re going to examine the gear setups of several of my favorite guitarists. We’re going to go over the guitars, amps, and pedals of some truly wonderful players and examine how you can imitate their distinctive sound yourself. I’d like to give a big thanks to Steve Barber for the suggestion, and if there is another guitarist’s rig you would like to see discussed in a future p

While guitar amplifiers can greatly differ by individual model, most brands of amplifiers have a set of tones and capabilities associated with its name. In part three of this guide to amplifiers, we’re going to explore some of the biggest amplifier brands on the market and go over what you can expect from each one. If you are unsure about the differences between tube amps and digital amps or what