Articles from November 2009

It’s been my experience that many drummers both young and old have a real lack of knowledge when it comes to tuning their drums. A properly-tuned drumset will not only sound good, but it will also motivate the drummer to want to practice and play more. It’s kind of like the difference between driving a old beat-up clunker and racing around in a new sportscar. (more…)

When connecting a mixer to a digital audio interface or multi-track recorder, you normally connect the Direct Out jack of each mixer channel to a track’s input on the interface. For example, let’s say your kick drum mic is connected to channel 1 of the mixer. If you wanted to record the kick drum to track 1, you would connect the channel 1 Direct Out to the track 1 input of the interface. You would then connect the channel 2 Direct Out to the track 2 input of the interface, etc. Using the Direct Outs in such a way takes each channel’s signal post-fader and post-EQ and sends it straight to the recording device. This allows you to record that one instrument (and only that instrument) to its corresponding track on the recorder or in your DAW software.

But what if your mixer doesn’t come equipped with Direct Outs? (more…)