Musical Instruments

The Yamaha FG720S dreadnaught style acoustic guitar and the APX500III electric acoustic feel, play, and sound like guitars well above their price points. In this blog I look at and play both of these guitars that prove cheap pricing doesn’t mean cheap craftsmanship or cheap sound.

A guitar and an amplifier, while clearly the most important ingredients in live performing, are but two of the components in this stew. While recipes differ from player to player, this is the core set of requirements that live players require as well as those extra little things that while not requisite, are certainly appreciated. In this blog I will go over some of the accessories that can make your performance truly shine by relieving stress and providing a helping hand when one is needed.

The goal of a studio monitor is to represent audio in the most accurate, uncoloured form it can. That being said, all speakers colour sound to some degree. Monitor speakers are designed to be as flat as possible whereas it’s assumed that consumer or Hi-Fi speakers enhance aspects of the frequency spectrum.   A pair of monitor speakers are going to be your best friend. Regardless of whether you record, edit, mix or master audio, your studio monitors will determine how well your work translates to … well, pretty well everything else out there: car audio systems, TV’s, headphones and earbuds.  

When my children were younger, I remember my wife and I contemplating questions like: when is my child ready for music? and How can I make sure they’ll like it? Even though we’re both classically trained pianists and I write and produce music for a living, we STILL grappled with these questions! Well I’m going to try to give all parents some answers. In addition to my own perspective on this subject, I bounced a few ideas off Jennifer Gasoi (2014 Grammy Award Winner- Best Children’s Album). She obviously has some fantastic insights and tips. You’ll see her perspective liberally peppered throughout this post.

IK Multimedia has taken already compact and portable recording technologies and made them even more compact and more portable. All of this without significantly restricting what or how you can record and what you can ultimately produce. In this blog I am going to look at two different IK Multimedia products. First is the iRig Pro, which was released in late 2013. I will then look at the brand new iRig2 and explain what each can do for you so that you might have a better idea which unit will meet your needs.