Less than ten years ago, a musician looking to videotape a rehearsal or make a music video had to shell out a few bucks and go through lots of setup time, followed by extensive editing time. Thankfully, video recorders have come a long way since then. And though you can find a video recorder on [...]

(Photos: Cody York) Cloud Cult’s ringleader Craig Minowa opens the gaping door of his three-car garage in rural Wisconsin. High bluffs of an inactive rock quarry rise in the distance. Trees sprout from the clifftops. Hawks and eagles swoop from the sky. The night before, a wolf standing on the ridgeline watched Cloud Cult’s six [...]

Chicago high school Northside College Prep is pulling out all the normal stops for their benefit auction. On the BiddingForGood website, they provide opportunities for buyers to put bids on everything from Pearl Jam at Wrigley Field tickets to various kinds of jewelry. Or, if you’re feeling generous, you can attempt to purchase a rather [...]

APOGEE QUARTET www.apogeedigital.com (MSRP $1,295) Are you a performing songwriter and Apple devotee looking to upgrade your recording setup? Perhaps you have a one or two input recording interface and would like to capture your duo or band in a more organic live setting? Or maybe you simply have outdated gear. If so, make the [...]

Balance with Reason Essentials is the first audio interface from Propellerhead, makers of Reason and Record software. Propellerhead has always focused on making sure that the software doesn’t get in the way of making music.  With Balance, they’ve set out to make sure that the hardware does just the same. Balance is a 2 input, [...]

Keith Urban, Three Doors Down, Taylor Swift, Chicago, Michael W. Smith – the list of major artists who have recorded at the Sound Kitchen recording studio is a Who’s Who of giants of country, pop, rock and Christian music that covers two decades. Founded in the early 1990s by Dino and (former Kansas vocalist) John [...]

When it came time to record their first album in four years, Joey Burns and John Convertino – the two men behind Calexico’s diverse, Latin-influenced desert rock – left their native Arizona and resettled in New Orleans. There, they created Algiers, a cinematic album named after one of the Big Easy’s oldest neighborhoods. Burns talked [...]

  Tascam iM2 I recently used the Tascam iM2 in one of our live sessions with The Vespers. The lightweight, plastic recording device plugged directly into the bottom port of my iPhone 4. For a relatively inexpensive recording device, I have to say I was impressed with the Tascam iM2. The Tascam iM2 is equipped [...]

At first glance, the Pelonis Model 42 monitors are just a uniquely shaped set of nearfield reference monitors. And though this unique, rhomboid-shaped set of monitors look interesting, that’s really not what’s important when dealing with most reference monitors. That rhombus shape turned out to be useful when placing the monitors, and, by using the [...]

Chet “JR” White, the bassist who heads up recording in the band, Girls, first got his start recording punk bands in Santa Cruz as a teenager. He later moved to San Francisco and attended the California Recording Institute and briefly set up a studio in a basement space on Market Street. But by the time [...]

Beirut, the band born out of the bedroom of Santa Fe teenager Zach Condon in the early 2000s, has come a long way fast. The night after I spoke with Condon by phone from his hotel in Belgium, where he was situated for a European press junket, Beirut played a show with Arcade Fire in [...]

Samson Studio GT Monitors With USB Interface List Price: $199.00 www.samsontech.com It’s a novel idea. The Samson Studio GT Monitors with its USB interface handles both ends of converting your signal into the digital realm for recording and back again into the audio signal you listen to. With the included Cakewalk Sonar LE software, the [...]