How to Host an Online Zoom Concert with MainStage

Ever since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve seen quite a few of my musician friends host online concerts with Zoom. While I’m probably not going to host concerts myself (I haven’t practiced piano in a year), this got me thinking about how to help others to improve the production quality of their online concerts to create a better experience for viewers. In this post, you’ll learn how to host a great-sounding Zoom concert with Apple MainStage.

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How Many Strings on Your Next Electric Bass?

Bass guitarists today have many options for the number of strings to have when purchasing a new bass, from 4- to 5-string options to 6-strings and beyond, and with a healthy mix of options across bass brands. We’ll go into these types below, and discuss the differnces between 4, 5, and 6-string basses, along with the reasons for choosing each type with associated long-term considerations.

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Lost in Las Vegas

In the summer of 2015, I visited Las Vegas for the first time. I had been hired to work on a large Dragone production in China, and the composer for the show, Michael Brennan, was based in Las Vegas. Michael decided to fly me over to Las Vegas to start doing some prep work for the show.

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How to Track Mailchimp Form Submission URLs

Recently, I started researching how to integrate an email newsletter signup form on my site. A few of my colleagues at work use HubSpot heavily, so I decided to check that out first. After creating an account and going through a few tutorials, I realized it was too complicated for my use case. I ended up reverting to MailChimp, which I’ve used on sites in the past.

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How to Record Multitrack Audio from MainStage to Logic Pro X

While MainStage has built-in recording capabilities, tracking to a proper DAW like Logic Pro X provides much more flexibility. If you want to run MainStage and record to Logic Pro X on the same computer with no quality loss, you’ll need a digital audio router of some sort. It’s technically possible to use either S/PDIF or ADAT for this kind of recording setup, but it’s much simpler to route audio in software – no cables and higher channel counts. In this post, you’ll learn how to record multitrack audio from MainStage to Logic Pro X with Loopback.

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How to Fade In and Fade Out Audio in Logic Pro X

Fading audio in and out is useful in a variety of situations. Whether you need to do a long fade out at the end of a song or add a short fade in at the start of an audio sample, Logic Pro X has the necessary tools to get it done. In this post, you’ll learn how to fade in and fade out audio in Logic Pro X.

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How an Audio Interface Reduces Latency for Music Production

Whether you’re a musician, mixing engineer, or podcaster, an audio interface is cruicial to your workflow and productivity. In addition to providing better sound quality than your computer’s built-in soundcard, and audio interface also offers reduced latency. In this post, we’ll take a look at how an audio interface can reduce latency in your audio recording and monitoring system.

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Quarantine Parenting

Right now, we’re about half an hour north of Boston. We’ve only been here for a month and a half, but it feels much longer. We decided to come here because Tokyo, with its insane population density and reliance on public transporation, doesn’t seem like the place to be during a global pandemic. Luckily, my parents and brother are here to help with Baby J, but some days are still very difficult.

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