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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What a Blown Monitor Mix Taught Me About Ego
I fixed a monitor problem that wasn’t a monitor problem, and it took a bad night to see it.
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No, the $2,000 Cable Doesn’t Make Your Guitar Sound Better
Someone has to say it, and the science already did — I’m just repeating it louder.
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Custom IEMs Ruined Stock Earbuds for Me Forever
Six drivers, molded to my ears, from InEarz. Why customs beat universals, what the break-in period nobody mentions feels like,…
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Parallel Compression for Vocals: When It Works, When It’s a Crutch
It’s not a magic vocal button. It’s a specific fix for a specific problem, and using it without that problem…
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Vintage Gear Worship Is Mostly Nostalgia Marketing
The tone isn’t in the year it was made. It’s mostly in the story you were sold about the year…
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The Drum Rig: DW Shells, a Black Beauty, and One Heavy K
The kit that actually gets recorded at Aina Studios — DW, the inevitable Black Beauty, Masterworks cymbals, a heavy K…
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I Ran a Budget Wireless IEM System for a Month — Here’s the Real Verdict
It’s not as good as the system that costs four times more. It’s also not supposed to be, and that…
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The Click Track Mistake That Will Wreck Your In-Ears
The click isn’t the problem. What you built around the click is the problem.
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How the Mic Locker Actually Gets Used
Warm Audio, Shure, sE, United Studio Technologies, Neumann — sorted by the jobs they actually do when the clock is…
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The Studio Brain: Studio One, Melodyne, and a Pile of Waves
The software stack at Aina Studios — Studio One, Melodyne, Waves, Analog Lab — and the philosophy behind it: less…