Walk into any bedroom studio today and you’ll likely see a laptop glowing with Ableton, Logic, or Pro Tools. But look a little closer, and in more and more cases, you’ll also find something else: a vintage synth, maybe a dusty tape machine, or a piece of retro music equipment that feels like it belongs in another era. Against all odds, and in defiance of convenience, analog gear is making a comeback. It’s not hard to see why. In a world where music can be created entirely on a phone, artists are craving something tactile, something imperfect, something real. Why Analog Gear Still Matters For all of digital’s power, it often lacks the quirks and unpredictability of analog. Vintage synths like the Roland Juno-106 or the Minimoog have a warmth and personality that software plug-ins still chase. Tape machines add hiss, saturation, and that signature “tape warmth sound” producers describe with reverence. Digital tools are infinite, pristine, and endlessly repeatable. Analog is messy. It dr...

From the first time I ever recorded audio so many years ago onto a cassette tape in the early 90’s, there have been many times I’ve played back something I’ve said and thought “I wish I had said that differently.” In those early attempts at hearing my voice and air guitar wails while impersonating Bruce Springsteen, I took my first steps toward what would, in my early twenties, become an obsession: recording the ultimate version of what a song is to me.  Our story starts in a humble time and place: in my parents’ basement in La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA, on a tape recorder held by my sister, Elizabeth. Although I didn’t know how to play any instruments or read sheet music and was, in fact, about 3 years old, I could record what was in my mind music. In part, this was due to the technology of the day and, also, a little bit of ingenuity on the part of my sister and I. Over the years after into my childhood, I did my share of musical exploration in terms of playing the violin and t...

The music world has never been afraid of chaos. Every few decades, some new wave rolls in: vinyl, MTV, Napster, Spotify, and suddenly the old guard is shaking its head while kids are already plugged into the future. Right now, that wave is AI in music.  AI in music isn’t science fiction anymore, it’s the reality of TikTok “leaks,” YouTube mashups, and playlists stuffed with tracks nobody can quite tell are human or algorithm. Depending on who you ask, that’s either thrilling or terrifying. Machines can now write songs , build entire beats , and even clone a singer’s voice so convincingly that casual listeners can’t tell the difference. For some, it’s thrilling; for others, it feels like the soul of music is being traded for code. The question isn’t whether AI belongs in music. It’s already here. The question is what kind of music culture we’re building if software can not only help with production, but actually emulate a singer’s voice or master an entire album in seconds. ...

Introduction Welcome to my memoir. This is meant to be a brief, inspirational short story of how I overcame setbacks and found my way with music, technology, and blogging. It’s not meant to be a how-to; That is, if you copy the steps I took, I can’t guarantee any sort of monetary success, nor can I guarantee success of any kind, really. Similarly, and conversely, I don’t wish my story to be perceived as a cautionary tale. In other words, I’m not saying you shouldn’t take the steps I took, necessarily, or that they are to be avoided, just that they haven’t worked for me entirely, monetarily or otherwise, yet .  The context that this introduction gives is a vital part of my story. It should be noted that, without reading the introduction, the rest of the text won’t make as much sense. However, if you’d like to skip ahead to different parts without reading the introduction, you could do this with very little degradation to the info I provide in the subsequent parts. This introduction ...