If you’re just starting out as a producer, or you just want to have some drums for riff ideas and such, you’ll probably go for programming drums with software such as EZ Drummer. It’s a great solution for those who don’t have the money, space, or ability to mic up a full acoustic set. Or maybe your drummer just flat-out sucks, that’s also a problem sometimes, haha.

Trouble is, even after you spend so much time programming a drum track, it still screams “fake.” I’ve recently had to program drums for one of my band’s songs because our drummer wasn’t able to track them that day, and I learned a couple of new things about working with computer drums. Continue reading →

As some of you may or not know (depending on how much you stalk me), I’m in a band. A long time ago, we were looking to record our first, serious EP. While I was already doing audio production to an extent, we decided to “let the professionals handle it,” thinking that they’d do a better job. We tried recording with several local producers, but the results were… less than splendid. So we ended up recording ourselves, with me handling production. Over time, I continued to notice mistakes that local producers kept making. Read on to see what they are. Continue reading →

Seriously. Apple’s following its own trend of adding a speed bump to an existing design, so I don’t see why everybody was expecting an iPhone 5. All the hype about the iPhone 5 is just that— hype. The media caught onto the rumors and propagated them to the point of everybody expecting them to be truth, but in the end they were still just rumors, albeit ones that went a bit further than previous ones, with mockups and fake cases made. And come on people, having a wedge/tapered shape would only make the iPhone look like an uglier iPod Touch, so shut up about that already. Thanks.

Out of every major website, Facebook seems to have the most ungrateful, fickle users. No matter what changes Facebook makes, they’re always met with vehement criticism and hatred, often to the point of users throwing personal insults at the Facebook devs. The problem with this is that it poses a catch-22 decision for the developers. Either to a) innovate and continue to advance, while users get angered, or b) do absolutely nothing and maintain everything as is, but then risk stagnation like MySpace did. Continue reading →

As you all may or may not have heard, NYC got hit by a snowstorm pretty hard right after Christmas. The storm came quickly and dumped about 20 inches of snow, leaving the city stranded. Cars, buses, and above-ground subway trains were stuck in the snow, and many still remain stuck that way as of this writing. Trouble is, this is the end of the second day after the storm, I shouldn’t still be seeing streets completely unplowed at this point, especially not in NYC.
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Tumblr’s most recent outage lasted for over a day, and while that may not seem to be very long, a day on the internet is an eternity of bad PR. It highlights the main problem with a “cloud” system— it’s quite vulnerable and can screw everyone over if not managed properly.
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