I can't tell you the number of times I've heard someone tell me you need to record as close to 0db as you can to "use up all the bits." Much has been written about proper recording levels in the digital domain, and from a purely theoretical/best practices standpoint there really isn't much more I …
Continue reading Tracking Volume: Why you don’t need to record all that hot (a case study)
So, first thing's first - my old Inca Silver Strat will always be near and dear to my heart. But, after almost 20 years, she was about due for a refret, and during the Fender period of the extensive pickup swapping I've done in her over the years I found myself thinking it would be …
Continue reading New Strat, Part One: Fender’s got a good thing going…
I recently rewired my Strat (which has had a humbucker in the bridge for the last five years or so, a Dimarzio AT-1 Andy Timmons model, which for the record sounds spectacular) with three singlecoils. While doing so, I tried a couple different "treble bleed" approaches for the guitar's volume knob. A bit of background …
...Even budget gear is good enough today that if you can't get at least a "good" guitar tone out of a budget USB interface, a Shure SM57, and a good sounding guitar rig, then the problem probably isn't your gear. I got the home recording bug back in late '99, in my freshman year in …
Continue reading Home Recording: Some Thoughts if You’re Thinking About Starting
A little quick and dirty, but some clean-toned blues playing through a Fender Blues Jr. I had in my studio recently: I've always thought Fender really got it right on this amp. It has a glorious clean tone, and just enough preamp gain to get a bit of dirt into the sound with singlecoil pickups. …
Continue reading Video: Playthrough with a Fender Blues Jr NOS
From the folks over at "Can This Even Be Called Music," a cool independent blog reviewing underground bands with, generally, a bit of a progressive, avant-garde bent. Full Disclosure, I've known Dave Lopez, the reviewer, for quite some time over at a guitar site I run with a couple buddies, but I think the fact …
I wasn't expecting to see it there so quickly (it got sent over to them this morning), but I checked their store this afternoon and sure enough, "Zero Mantra" is now for sale on the iTunes store. It's been up on CD Baby for a couple days now, as well, though they only have an …
So, I came home to this sitting on my front step tonight; about thirty pounds worth of CDs in two boxes on my front porch. This is an album that I've quite literally spent the last ten years of my life either writing for, recording, mixing, or procrastinating on finishing up the liner notes, and …
Continue reading Hey, So There’s This Box of CDs on my Dining Table…
http://youtu.be/mvcekdVJJLQ This is a lesson I did a couple of years back on YouTube... When I bought my first seven string, in the summer of 2001, there really wasn't much available in the way of good instructional material or even transcriptions of seven strung tunes to learn from, so I had to sit down and …
Continue reading Video: Seven String Guitar: An Introduction
Ok, this project has been a long time coming... Long enough, in fact, that my musician buddies used to joke for a number of years that it was going to be a tossup which came out first, my debut or Axl Rose's "Chinese Democracy." Needless to say, I lost that one. The earliest song on this album …
Drew Peterson 
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