Small break

Sorry for the lack of posting ladies and gentlemen, I've been out this weekend practicing and recording a local band's demo. I may upload a track or something later in the week when it gets closer to finished.

Oh yeah, The Flaming Tsunamis' released a few tracks of their new album the other day, everyone should go check them out right now. They scare me sometimes.

Recording

Here's a recording that me and one of my friends (the guitar player for my band) made in about 5 hours of total work about a year ago!


These hands (acoustic) by Hutchsmusic

Beta 52a

Today I'll be reviewing the Shure Beta 52a

The Shure Beta 52a is large diaphragm dynamic microphone designed specially for kick drums, bass cabs, and other low-frequency intensive sources. The frequency range on this microphone is awesome! It picks up the really lows, but can also pick up highs for overtones in your sound. Whenever I use this on my kick drums it gives it a nice punch, but my bass drum is also naturally punchy being a smaller size.

This microphone can also make a killer vocal microphone since it's responding frequencies are broad, and it's a dynamic microphone so it won't pick up TOO much and can be used for live sound

The only drawback that I've noticed is that sometimes the frequencies are too broad, and you have to rolloff the ending frequencies to make it sound cleaner and usuable

 The Shure Beta 52a can be picked up for a little over $150 USD, and can also come in a sweet mic package that comes with this and 3 SM57s, which I'll get to another day

NT1-A

Today I think I'll start off my reviews of microphones, starting with one of my personal favorites, the Rode NT1-A.

The NT1-A is a large diaphragm condenser microphone, slightly tweaked from the original NT1 and released in an anniversary package which includes...

The Cat Empire

The Cat Empire is an awesome latin/ska band out of Melbourne, Australia and have been one of my favorite bands for a couple of years now. They're very energetic and relaxed at the same time. They play the perfect kind of music to go along with a day of cruisin' around. They play shows around Melbourne and other parts of Australia but they rarely come to the states from what I hear. The best album of theirs, in my opinion, is their first. The later ones are good, but nothing beats the first one. If they ever play in a town near me you can bet I'll be at that show

The Coming Month

This April seems to be shaping up to be a good one for me, there's a couple of good shows coming through Texas which is almost a rarity these days. I don't know why, but it just seems a lot of artists avoid Texas at all costs. It was really cool when the Aquabats came through though.

Gogol Bordello is coming through. I LOVE these guys, their style is very unique and their shows are always full of energy and a blast to go to. They're a Ukrainian gypsy punk band that will rock your pants off.

Not to mention that Eugene Hutz is one interesting dude. He's been the base for a couple of characters in movies and books like the ukrainian guy in Wristcutters: a Love Story. He's even acted in a few movies.

Sometime after that I'll going to see a Protest the Hero, a prog metal band out of Canada. I've recently been introduced to these guys, but I really like their sound.

I'm pretty excited to check these guys out especially since they'll be touring with Maylene and the Sons of Disaster. I've been told those guys have sick sets

Mixed in there will probably be a few shows of my own, one with local hardcore/metal favorite Kublai Khan, maybe hop on a few with On the Shoulders of Giants, and would be EPIC if we could get one of my personal favorites out of north Texas to come out: Informant

http://www.myspace.com/informanttx

A few reviews

I recently came into a number of  pretty neat pieces of electronic equipment. Since I do a lot of work with music I guess it seems natural that I come across a lot of equipment

Firsts off I want to talk about my new headphones. 

Dr. Beats solo hd. These things are pretty sick. I strolled on over with a best buy gift card and picked these bad boys up. The quality of these is amazing, and they can get really loud. The world is pretty much dead to you if you have it above half volume, and they articulate bass frequencies better than any other headphone I've tried to date

There are a few drawbacks though. The on-ear style makes them mildly uncomfortable after a few hours of wear. And the cable that plugs into the headphone gets pulled and stripped easily, the first cable on mine already has internal wires exposed. The cables are produced by monster though, so maybe they'll replace them for free like they do their other cables?

Moving on to my new mixer/audio interface, the Tascam US-800. This thing is pretty sweet, small and portable, but still has functionality. It has "8" inputs, 6 of which are XLR so you can plug in mics or some quarter-inch junk. The other 2 are MIDI inputs so... yeah i guess they could be good for a live setting but in a recording situation a lot of computers already have MIDI interfaces available. It connects through USB so it's compatible with most computers. It says it can sample at rates up to 196 kHz but that's pretty much a lie, I think I could only get mine to go up to 88.2 or 96 kHz. It's really not cut out for live sound since it only has volume settings channels, no efftects, panning, reverb or the like built in

I think I'll leave microphones out for another time, and i could do a review of my phone, but we've all heard enough of the iPhone 4 and junk. too bad I'm still stuck with at and t

About Me

Welcome, everyone! It seems that you have stumbled across my little corner of the internet.

A few things about me:
-My name is Hutch and I live in north Texas
-I'm an avid musician
-I'm an avid video game player
-I'm currently a college student

What I want to accomplish with this blog:
-Give some information on shows I play or go to
-Talk about bands, music, instruments, and equipment
-provide tips on how to do some sweet homebrew recording
-Whatever else I feel like posting about I suppose

I hope to see more of you in the future!