Muziker Blog | page 2

Most people know the classical guitar as the first one they learned on. It is also called a Spanish guitar and music schools still start on it. We go through what size a child and an adult need, and which strings you are allowed to fit.

August was a rich month for new gear. Two names the whole world had been waiting for arrived, along with three brands we never carried before and a new generation of Yamaha mixers. These are ten pieces from August you should know about.

Restringing is the one bit of maintenance you will keep doing for as long as you play. We walk through the whole thing from slackening the first string to the final tune-up, separately for acoustic, electric and classical guitars.

You have the kit and the sticks, and the whole thing still sounds cheap. Nine times out of ten the cymbals are to blame. They are the most expensive pieces of metal a drummer buys and the first thing an audience hears.

A tuner is the first thing a guitarist needs. Before the first chord. We compare clip-on tuners, pedal tuners and phone apps so you know what to buy first.

You are sitting at the computer with a project open in your DAW, clicking notes into the grid with a mouse. It works, but it takes forever and the result sounds like clockwork. This is the exact point where most people buy their first MIDI controller, also known as a MIDI keyboard.

Bridge, fret, pickup. You read these words in every guitar tutorial, but nobody ever explained them properly. Here is a clear guide to the parts of a guitar, from headstock to body.

Boom bap was not born in an expensive studio. It came from a turntable, a pile of old records and one sampler. A producer found four seconds of drums on a soul album, looped them and put rap on top. These are the ten albums it all stands on. You should not be missing a single one at home.

The synthesizer was a luxury for a long time. In the sixties it took up a whole studio wall and cost as much as a car. Then it got smaller, it got cheaper, and by the early eighties even a broke band could get one. These are the ten albums 80s synth-pop stands on. You should not be missing a single one at home.

A Floyd Rose gives you the best whammy action and the worst headaches. It works on the balance between string tension and spring tension, and when that balance is off, your guitar never comes back to pitch. In episode 16 of Studio Lab, Lukas and Jakub Hribik walk you through the whole setup: string changes, fine tuners, springs and blocking the trem. Here is the guide from both parts, written out step by step.