Alright, you picked up a fancy new audio interface and you think you’re ready to record…but instead of getting a dynamic mic that naturally cuts out background noise, you opted for a condenser mic because you wanted to pick up every little detail of your recordings.

Normally your options would be to rent out a studio recording space somewhere or concoct some home-brewed audio treatment setup. However, those of us living in small spaces may not have that luxury, and other people may just not feel like going to all that effort.

That’s why Eric Chiu started a company called Poroso, where he sells a product invented out of his own frustration: the SOBO portable sound booth.

Essentially, the SOBO is a PVC pipe-and-joint frame covered by sound-diffusing thick blankets that attach with velcro straps, and it comes with a couple wireless LED lights, a phone/tablet holder, and a duffel bag. Nothing you couldn’t assemble yourself if you wanted, but it sure saves you all the time and effort of sourcing materials and tools, cutting pieces to size, sewing on straps, etc.

Fully assembled, it stands at 80″ (6 feet 8 inches) tall, with a width of 38″ (3 feet 2 inches) in all directions. The whole thing goes up in just a few minutes, and after recording, you can simply deconstruct it for storage.

This is a perfect solution for musicians, podcasters, voice actors, and voiceover artists who require pristine, professional-level audio for their work assignments and personal projects, but don’t have access to a full studio space (especially while traveling).

Get the SOBO for $400 on Amazon.

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To go with that 4th gen Scarlett audio interface I recently wrote about, I recommend using the iconic Shure SM7B microphone for all your vocal recording needs, now that the preamps offer more than enough gain to power it so you no longer need an inline booster like the Cloudlifter.

In case you’re unfamiliar, the SM7B has been an industry-standard mic for decades, seeing use across every imaginable field of professional vocal audio capture, from radio/TV broadcasting to music-making to voiceover work to podcasting to livestreaming and beyond.

The fact that it’s a dynamic mic with a cardioid pattern rather than a condenser type makes it extremely good at rejecting ambient noise (i.e. anything that isn’t your voice directly in front of it), which is especially useful for those of us who don’t have an acoustically treated space to record in but still want the clearest possible capture.

The other shining point is its max SPL of 180 dB, which allows it to handle extremely loud sound sources without distortion, whether it’s drums, horns, the loudest screamiest metal vocals you can imagine… practically anything short of setting the mic directly behind a live jet engine.

There’s a reason the SM7B and its predecessors have been trusted for so long, and once it’s in your hands — or rather, on your favorite mic stand or boom arm — you can rest assured that all your vocal recording needs will be met with aplomb.

Get it for $399 on Amazon.

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About a year and a half ago I wrote about the Chocobo & Chill album, which featured fifteen of Nobuo Uematsu’s beloved Final Fantasy tracks flipped and remixed by lo-fi beat-maker Rifti Beats in collaboration with video game record label GameChops. As a lifelong FF fan, you bet it’s something I still listen to often while working.

Yesterday, GameChops and Rifti released the long-awaited sequel, Chocobo & Chill II, which contains sixteen additional lo-fi reinterpretations of Final Fantasy songs from across the entire series. I’m listening even as I write this, and just riding a wave of absolute nostalgia with a lot of the tracks that have come on.

Here’s a bit more description about the album as shared by the label:

Chocobo & Chill II highlights music heard across the series (such as the main theme and victory fanfare), the Super Nintendo’s Final Fantasy IV and VI, Final Fantasy VII–IX for PlayStation, Final Fantasy X and XI for PlayStation 2, the massively popular MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, and Final Fantasy XV. Prominently featuring the work of Nobuo Uematsu, who Rifti cites as one of the greatest composers of all time, Chocobo & Chill II also includes compositions by Masashi Hamauzu, Masayoshi Soken, and Yoko Shimomura. 

Here’s the full track list, with s to denote my personal favorites:

#	Track name	= standout track
1.	“Ahead on Our Way”
2.	“Besaid Island”
3.	“Cosmo Canyon”
4.	“Holding My Thoughts in My Heart”
5.	“The Place I’ll Return to Someday”
6.	“Someday the Dream Will End”
7.	“Fisherman’s Horizon”
8.	“Sultana Dreaming”
9.	“Theme of Love”
10.	“ViVi’s Theme”
11.	“Ronfaure”
12.	“Gold Saucer”
13.	“The Decisive Battle”
14.	“Victory Fanfare II”
15.	“Somnus”
16.	“Final Fantasy Lofi”

Get the album in these places:

• Apple Music
• Amazon Music
• Spotify
• Tidal

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ROKR is a company that specializes in crafting intricate wooden mechanical model kits and 3D puzzles, often with moving parts, gears, and mechanisms that you can assemble without glue or special tools.

Perhaps two of their more whimsical offerings are a pair of wooden wind-up “instrument” music boxes that you assemble yourself:

1. Magic Cello (model #: AMK63) — 199 pieces, plays Nocturne, Op.9, No.2 in E-flat

   
   

2. Magic Piano (model #: AMK81) — 223 pieces, plays “Canon Variations”

   
   

Both of them are impressively detailed in terms of design and moving parts — the latter of which you can observe through the body of the instrument as it operates — and each makes an elegant display piece that comes to life whenever you desire it.

Normally the kits are priced at around $40 each, but you can buy them both as a bundle for $67 and save some money. Happy building and listening! ⚙️

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Despite the very small space we live in, having music instruments around the home is a big deal for me and my wife. We’ve both seen how important it is for kids to grow up in a place where music is always around, especially if they’re the ones playing it.

The trick for us is to find instruments that don’t take up a lot of room. Things like ukuleles and kalimbas are obvious choices, but what about learning via piano? It’s surely the single best way to pick up concepts of music theory like chords, progressions, scales, etc…but how to fit one in here?

After some searching, we discovered this folding piano keyboard and realized it was the perfect thing for our kids. It offers the functionality you’d expect from a full-sized keyboard — various demo tracks to play along with, lots of instrument tones, just as many backing rhythms, recording functionality, and so on — but then it folds in half for easy storage!

We like that it came with so many little accessories, like a carrying case, a sustain foot pedal, a music sheet stand and clip, a pair of little headphones for private playing, and more. It can also be connected to a computer or smartphone via USB or Bluetooth, and works with piano learning/recording apps like POP Piano, Perfect Piano, and Garageband.

Pick up this travel-friendly beginner’s keyboard piano for $116 on Amazon.

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There are loads of bands in the world who, at some point in their careers, decide they’re going to put out a high concept album rather than a straightforward collection of songs. However, for The Dear Hunter — one of my all-time favorite groups — concept albums are the norm, not the exception.

For their 2013 album Migrant (the band’s fifth studio release), vocalist and songwriter Casey Crescenzo went in a less grandiose direction, opting instead for a more introspective and soul-baringly honest album spoken from his own personal perspective. Several of the songs on it are favorites of mine that I often sing along with to this day.

You can imagine, then, how excited I was to hear about a total reimagining of Migrant that released a month ago, titled Migrant Returned.

The album I fell in love with a decade ago got a fresh coat of paint, with all the songs remastered/rearranged/remixed in some way, along with a new track order that now includes six bonus tracks previously released as The Migrations Annex: “Dig Your Own Grave,” “Old Demons” (now listed as “Older Demons”), “The Love,” “Middle Ground,” “Like Crazy,” and “Owls”.

“It is, without a doubt, the original recordings. The performances are exactly the same as the original, they’ve just made changes to the arrangements and remixed it to their liking, bringing up some parts that were more buried in the mix previously, but definitely not re-recorded.”

—u/TheGimpAndTheFeast, Reddit

As with any album reprise, there are changes that longtime fans will either love or disagree with — a removed intro or string section here, a change in melody or guitar tone there — but overall this feels like a release the band is much happier with, and that counts for something. I know I’m hearing layers in the songs that were probably there the whole time but feel totally new.

Redditor u/crazy_cat_lord wrote a list of comparisons between each of the Returned songs and their original versions from Migrant and Annex, which I think is worth a read whether or not you were a fan of the original album or TDH in general.

Here’s the full Migrant Returned track list, with s to denote my personal favorites:

#	Track name	Standout tracks
1.	“An Escape”
2.	“Girl”
3.	“Let Go”
4.	“Kiss of Life”
5.	“Sweet Naiveté”
6.	“Whisper”
7.	“Shame”
8.	“This Vicious Place”
9.	“Middle Ground”
10.	“Bring You Down”
11.	“Like Crazy”
12.	“Shouting At The Rain”
13.	“Cycles”
14.	“Dig Your Own Grave”
15.	“Don’t Look Back”
16.	“Owls”
17.	“Older Demons”
18.	“The Love”

Get the album in these places:

• Apple Music
• Amazon ($10)
• Vinyl ($40)
• Spotify
• Tidal

Buy/Listen

Thanks to a recent tour announcement by Justin Hawkins (lead singer of The Darkness), I discovered a band called Bad Nerves that’s quickly become my new favorite thing.

They’re a London-based power-pop group with some obvious classic punk and garage rock influences, like if you took the adrenaline-fueled ferocity of The Ramones and swagger of The Buzzcocks, then mixed it with the melodic sensibilities of The Strokes and My Chemical Romance.

Their 2018 self-titled debut album is a nonstop, fast-paced rhythmic onslaught all the way through, and even with 12 songs, it only takes 27 minutes to listen to the whole thing. It’s all-killer-no-filler, and if you’re like me, you’ll have it on repeat a lot.

Their music video for “Can’t Be Mine” was the first thing I heard, and I immediately knew I needed to hear more:

What’s crazy to me is how great it sounds live, especially on vocalist Bobby Nerves’ part:

From there I watched a full recorded show they did, and not only was I all the more impressed with how consistent Bobby’s vocals are, that was also when I truly realized how insane drummer Samuel Thompson is:

NSFW for language

Can’t believe how long he’s able to maintain that drumming speed, what a machine!

Anyway, you’ve gotta listen to this album. It’s crazy that these guys haven’t gotten more attention, and I feel like I should’ve heard about them much sooner, so I’m doing my part to spread the word.

Here’s the full track list, with s to denote my personal favorites:

#	Track name	= standout track
1.	“Can’t Be Mine”
2.	“Mad Mind”
3.	“Baby Drummer”
4.	“Palace”
5.	“Radio Punk”
6.	“Bored of Babies”
7.	“Electric 88”
8.	“Wasted Days”
9.	“New Shapes”
10.	“Last Beat”
11.	“Terminal Boy”
12.	“Dreaming”

Get the album in these places:

• Apple Music
• Amazon ($9)
• CD ($20)
• Spotify
• Tidal

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Last November, to celebrate their 60th anniversary, Japanese company Audio-Technica released the limited-edition AT-SB2022 turntable, a modernized red version of their quirky-looking “Sound Burger” portable record player from 1983 (model AT770).

7,000 total units were made, because…how many people are actually gonna buy this retro novelty thing, right? Well, it turned out to be more of a cult classic than even Audio-Technica predicted, because it took only a few days to completely sell out of them worldwide.

Whether you were sad you couldn’t get your hands on one at the time or you’re only hearing about it now, I’m pleased to report that they’ve decided to return the Sound Burger to their regular catalog in the form of the AT-SB727!

Like the SB2022, the SB727 brings all the 40-year nostalgia, portability, and unique listening experience of the original model, with modern features added like Bluetooth connectivity and USB-C charging. The main difference is that it doesn’t come in the limited-edition red color — instead, you get a choice of yellow ($299) or black ($279), with a white version coming in early July 2023.

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Much like a ukelele and steel tongue drum, picking up a kalimba (aka “thumb piano”) is an easy and fun way to pluck out some soothing tunes whenever the urge strikes.

There are tons of great kalimbas sold online — often in 21-key, 17-key, or 15-key configurations — so as long as you check the reviews before buying one, you’re probably fine. However, my vote goes to the Moozica RS Series 21-Key, a beautiful instrument with a glossy flat board made from solid rosewood.

The fact that the board is solid all the way through rather than having a hollow cavity is a matter of personal preference, at least in terms of sound. This video demonstrates the difference:

This one’s worth watching too:

So basically…

• Flatboard = bright, clear, and gentle
• Hollow = warm, round, and full

Although I usually prefer the sound of the flatboard, the lack of a sound hole means that it sometimes needs a little help in the amplification/recording department. If you think you’ll be using your kalimba for performances (live or prerecorded), you may want to pick up the version that comes with a pickup receiver ($70).

For those of you who intend to play music for yourself alone — or you’re looking for a nice gift for someone else — you can buy the receiver-less kalimba for $55 on Amazon.

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I recently discovered the insanely talented jazz duo DOMi & JD Beck, a pair of musical prodigies with better technical chops than some people who’ve played for decades. See their Tiny Desk Concert to see what I mean:

Video contains explicit language

Keyboardist DOMi Louna hails from Nancy, France, while drummer JD Beck from Dallas, Texas. The two of them met as ensemble players at NAMM 2018, where they instantly discovered a friendship and musical chemistry that has since earned them a whole lot of acclaim — and deservedly so.

Here’s another performance of theirs that I’ve had on repeat a lot lately:

You can see why they’ve drawn the attention of the likes of Anderson .Paak, Thundercat, Robert Searight (aka “Sput”) of Snarky Puppy, and more.

DOMi’s ability to play intricate bass lines (either with her left hand or her feet) while her right hand runs up and down the keyboard is nothing short of incredible, and Beck’s choppy, fast-paced breakbeat drumming style absolutely never misses. Between them, you get something that resembles jazz fusion with hints of Aphex Twin.

Their first album, NOT TiGHT, was released earlier this year (July 2022) and as Apple Music’s editors accurately describe, it’s “a 15-track jazz-fusion odyssey of head-nodding hip-hop, psychedelic vocoder experiments, and rhythmic freakouts.” For being such young musicians, what they were able to pull off on this album is unbelievable — although from all the videos I’ve watched of them perform, seeing them live seems to be the superior way to experience what they can do.

Anyway, here’s the album’s full track list, with s to denote my personal favorites (which all happen to be ones with vocals, which I guess indicates my preference):

#	Track name	= standout track
1.	“LOUNA’s iNTRO”
2.	“WHATUP”
3.	“SMiLE”
4.	“BOWLING” (feat. Thundercat)
5.	“NOT TiGHT” (feat. Thundercat)
6.	“TWO SHRiMPS” (feat. Mac DeMarco)
7.	“U DON”T HAVE TO ROB ME”
8.	“MOON” (feat. Herbie Hancock)
9.	“DUKE”
10.	“TAKE A CHANCE” (feat. Anderson .Paak)
11.	“SPACE MOUNTAiN”
12.	“PiLOT” (feat. Anderson .Paak, Busta Rhymes, and Snoop Dogg)
13.	“WHOA” (feat. Kurt Rosenwinkel)
14.	“SNiFF”
15.	“THANK U”

Buy/stream the album in these places:

• Apple Music
• Amazon Music
• CD ($12)
• Vinyl ($42)
• Spotify
• Tidal

Get Album

Fellow Final Fantasy fans, I’ve got another sweet music release for you. The video game record label GameChops — who put out that FFVII rap album a while back — teamed up with lofi beatmaker Rifti Beats to concoct Chocobo & Chill, a 15-track album of dreamy Final Fantasy remixes.

You can read GameChops’ description of the album for details, but suffice to say that the tracks are taken from many of the games in FF history, with an emphasis on games VII through X. I’ve had it on repeat for the past few days, and I can tell you, this is excellent writing/studying music, especially if you were already a fan of the FF soundtracks to begin with.

Here’s the full track list, with s to denote my personal favorites:

#	Track name	= standout track
1.	“The Prelude”
2.	“Chocobo”
3.	“Final Fantasy VII” (feat. PianoDreams)
4.	“Aerith’s Theme”
5.	“Breezy”
6.	“Victory Fanfare”
7.	“Sight of Spira” (feat. Super Guitar Bros)
8.	“Crossing Those Hills”
9.	“To Zanarkand”
10.	“Tidus’s Theme” (feat. Pontus Hultgren)
11.	“The Extreme”
12.	“Terra’s Theme”
13.	“Balamb Garden”
14.	“Village of Dali”
15.	“Song of Memories”

Get the album in these places:

• Apple Music
• Amazon ($10 if you buy the MP3 album)
• Vinyl ($31 pre-order; releases October 21st, 2022)
• Bandcamp ($10)
• Spotify

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Artiphon is a Nashville-based company that designs what they call “smart instruments”, one of which is the Orba 2. This round handheld gizmo looks like some kind of game controller, but is in fact a portable sound studio that lets you create music immediately and wherever you go, even while walking.

Whereas the original Orba was limited to whatever synth sounds were loaded onto it, the Orba 2 gives you the ability to record and import sounds of your own, including those from your environment — whether it’s singing birds, a bicycle bell, your own voice, or whatever else — and create unique “instruments” from them.

These custom instrument presets can then be played using the capacitive touch pads on top of the device, along with various gestures and movements that are picked up by its accelerometer and gyroscope — i.e. Tap, Press, Radiate, Tilt, Shake, Spin, Vibrato, Move, and Bump — so that creating music feels just as versatile and organic as putting your hands on a traditional instrument.

This comparison video shows how the Orba 2 differs from the first Orba:

Not only can you create awesome melodies from any sound you’ve captured, you can create 128-bar loops (up to ~5 minutes) with up to four layers of samples — Drum, Bass, Chord, and Lead — and have each of them automatically quantized to play in time perfectly, all right there on the device.

There’s a built-in speaker so you can listen to your creations out loud, or you can plug in a pair of headphones for the best experience. You can also connect to MIDI-based software and hardware via USB-C or Bluetooth to expand your music-making horizons even further.

I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of what the Orba 2 is capable of, but trust me, if you’re into making music or even just interesting sound samples, this is the gadget is for you. Get one for $150 on Amazon.

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If you follow anything that has to do with music production, the name Rick Beato (that’s bee-AH-toh, not BEAT-oh) almost certainly rings a bell, and his YouTube channel might already be one of your favorites anyway.

If you’re not familiar, he’s been a music educator and producer for decades, from his days as a professor teaching jazz studies at Ithaca College in the late ’80s to his long list of album credits to his current status as the guy behind a YouTube mini-empire (about 3 million subscribers as I write this!).

Another of his many projects is The Beato Book, a music theory textbook he originally wrote for his Ithaca students after discovering that no other textbook covered the material he was truly interested in teaching. After eventually being convinced by a friend to sell it to the public, the book has now gone through several revisions over the years, the latest of which is a total rewrite-from-the-ground-up that just went live this week.

The Beato Book Interactive, as he calls it, is a completely browser-based digital book that offers a creative approach to contemporary music theory and improvisation for any musician, no matter what instrument they play.

This 500-page book covers the stuff you’d expect, like chords, harmonies, intervals, modes, etc, but then dives deep into more advanced concepts like chromatic polychords, triadic improvisation, various studies on soloing, a whole bunch of arpeggio types, and much more.

The examples throughout are accompanied (heh) by music players and video lessons so you can hear/visualize for yourself what he’s explaining in the music notation and tablature. Some of those videos are actually full-on lectures, so it feels a lot like attending a respected music theory class from the comfort of your own home.

As of June 17th, 2022, The Beato Book Interactive is on sale for $79, down from its usual $99. Anyone who’s purchased a previous edition of the book is eligible for a free upgrade.

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Are you a guitarist who loves the sound a cranked-up amp makes, but you drive everyone in your house nuts with the insane loudness of it? How are you supposed to get that awesomely distorted, crunchy tone and keep the speaker volume down?

Actually, that’s precisely what a guitar power attenuator allows you to do. The Bugera PS1 “Power Soak” is one such device that does this job well, and it’s an enticingly priced one at that. You hook it up between your amp and your speaker cabinet, crank up the amp to get whatever guitar sound you’re looking for, then use the big “Soak” knob to lower the speaker’s volume to a reasonable level without losing that sweet, sweet tone. Simple as that!

Get this thing for $109 on Amazon and keep rocking out. Your family and neighbors will thank you for it, believe me. 🤘

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Paige has been a trusted name in the guitar capo space since 1988, with a reputation for making a no-nonsense minimalist product that does its job perfectly without fuss.

Their electric guitar capo is lightweight yet durable, goes on quickly and securely, and thanks to its excellent tension, you’ll never have a problem with buzzing or playing out of tune, even if you’re moving it between the 1st and 5th frets a lot.

This short promo shows how easy it is to install and store the capo on a guitar:

Get this well-made electric guitar capo for $26 on Amazon.

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