Field Notes
Writing on music, craft, and building things
Notes on the work — practice, production, teaching, and everything that goes into building the tools and the book.
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Backups Are a Worship Value
Redundancy isn’t paranoia. It’s how you love the people in the room when the gear stops caring.
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Your Church Doesn’t Need a New Console. It Needs Gain Structure.
The upgrade meeting happens every year. The gain-staging afternoon almost never does. Guess which one fixes the sound.
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192kHz Won’t Save Your Mix: Sample Rates, Explained Calmly
The math says 44.1kHz captures everything you can hear. The marketing says otherwise. The math is not the one selling…
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The 3:1 Rule: Mic Placement Math That Actually Matters
One piece of arithmetic prevents most phase misery: keep the second mic three times farther away than the first.
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Stop Maxing the Master Bus — Headroom Is a Feature
That last 3dB you’re squeezing out of the master isn’t loudness. It’s distortion with a delivery date.
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Ring Out the Monitors Before the Band Ever Arrives
Feedback hunting with a band on stage is a hostage situation. Do it alone, before anyone arrives, and Sunday gets…
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The Helix Stadium XL Ate the Pedalboard
Previous Helixes: okay. Quad Cortex: phenomenal. HeadRush: trash. The Stadium XL is the first modeler that’s felt incredible instead of…
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sE V7 vs the SM57: What the Charts Actually Say
No shootout stories, no vibes. The published response curves of both mics, side by side, and how to match the…
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How to Build a Stage Rider Sound Engineers Actually Read
Most stage riders get skimmed once and ignored. Here’s the one-page format sound engineers actually use — input list, stage…
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Unpopular Opinion: Click Tracks Are Overrated for Small Acoustic Sets
Everyone runs a click because everyone else runs a click. For a three-piece acoustic set, it’s often doing more harm…