Musical Instruments

Get your inner diva or rock god flowing in your own home surrounded by friends. A home karaoke machine will make your parties the talk of the town!

There’s a lot to like and very few nits to pick with the Shure MOTIV line. Following up on my review of the MV88, I got to take the rest of the MOTIV line (MV5, MV51 and MVi) for a spin. These made-for-portable-recording devices are well designed, rugged and will get the job done… and get it done well.

The Korg Liano L1 is a compact digital keyboard that includes 8 sounds and is a simple, yet powerful option for beginners.

Arranger-style keyboards are a great way of exploring musical ideas and creating songs on the fly. Korg's EK-50 offers a powerful set of features, at an affordable price.

The Roland CUBE GX20 is a compact 20 watt guitar amplifier with an 8” speaker and an attitude that aggressively snarls in your face metal. It features independent Clean, Lead, and Solo channels as well as modelling for 6 different amp types. This ensures that whether you’re sitting in your room shredding or running a line out from your GX20 to do some home recording, your needs are met with this lightweight, solidly constructed, and versatile bad boy.

The Epiphone Hummingbird is an excellent affordable alternative to Gibson's legendary model.

For the vast majority of home studio owners, the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software is the control center of their studio. The DAW is the program that allows you to create, record, edit and arrange audio.   Picking one that fits your needs can be a confusing tornado of options, features and opinion. Which one do you chose? 

The Casiotone CT-S1 is a streamlined 61-note keyboard that is geared towards beginners.

Any meaningful discussion with an recording engineer will inevitably morph into a discussion about microphones. Just as a closet full of shoes is never enough for a lot of the women I’ve known, a closet full of microphones is rarely ever enough for most recording engineers. There are a lot of different types of microphones and there are a many, many brands, shapes and sizes to pick from. I hope to at least get you started with a road-map of what to look for in microphones and I apologize in advance for setting you on this path! If you’re set on recording as a hobby or career, there’s a very good chance that you’re going to get slightly obsessed with microphones.

The Yamaha Gigmaker electric guitar essentials pack includes everything we need to discover the electric guitar. For beginners, it is a great place to start.