Insights By Type

Be aware, at a minimum, for each socket you connect via your patch bay, you will use 2 cables, where it is the default connection. You will use 3 cables if you change it from a default to make a different connection.

Before I used patch bays at home, the sockets of more than one expensive item of gear were damaged. It’s an issue that no longer happens.

Working musicians carry three different relationships with instruments. Mostly, we never separate them out. There are the ones you play – where you’ve played an instrument long enough that we don’t need to think of technique. There are the ones you can fake – where retakes and the forgiveness of a DAW let you get a passable part down that holds up in a mix. Live, you’d be exposed inside eight bars. Lastly, are the ones you understand well enough to write for – instruments you might never play, but you understand them, the register breaks, the voicings a player would actually choose. That last category is often underrated.

I find the circle of fifths useful, but also chord_files “Progressions” and “Dark Harmony”, for both piano and guitar, are very useful. Both can help take you in quite interesting directions, by opening up your available palate, no matter where you find yourself when you go down an arrangement rabbit hole.