BONGO TIES

A cool new item for all of your music cables!

Bongo Ties!


My home is completely overrun with cables of all sorts. I have microphone cables, guitar cables, power cables, extension cables, and lets not forget that I am a photographer too, and there are just as many cables associated with that trade.

I have no room to hang a cable rack in my home, so I have tried everything in order to avoid having one big “cable knot” in my home. Lets' see, I have tried rubber bands, wire bread ties, Velcro strap thingy, and even hemp twine. Nothing seems to be rugged, quick, or easy to use.

Well, now my life is a snap! I use Bongo Ties for all of my rolled up cables! I love them! But, the uses do not stop there! Wherever you need a third hand, Bongo Ties can help. I use Bongo Ties to hold flashlights, microphones, and flash strobe units in place.

Here is a link to the Bongo Ties website. Plus, you can find them on Ebay, and other places found on the Bongo Ties website!

Bobby Jarzombek metal midi groove library demo.

Played by Bobby Jarzombek (of Halford, Spastic Ink) so you know that this library rocks! This library, from the good folks over at Platinum Samples, is composed of over 1,670 MIDI files (over 3,430 bars of unquantized grooves), and you will find just what you need, or are looking for.

Formatted for BFD2®, EZdrummer®, Superior Drummer®, Addictive Drums®, Cakewalk® Session Drummer™ & *General MIDI Standard MIDI Files (all included).

Includes 24 complete Metal & Rock performances performed by Bobby Jarzombek, plus this midi library includes stadium endings too!

Played in 4/4 with straight, triplet & swing feels in tempos ranging from 92 to 298 BPM, and this library ships with all sorts of alternate brass, snare, and all of the other kit piece midi!!! This means a ton of features to play with!

If metal is your choice, You owe it to yourself to head over to Platinum Samples and get this midi library!

Amplitube, Amplitube 2, the Irig, the Imic, Vocalive, the Iklip, and the Ipad.

Tech toys gone wild!

Not to “date” myself, but I can recall when the newest great thing was perhaps the Tascam four track recorders that could put our very own rough home demos right onto cassette tapes for all to hear. Yep, cassette players were the “boss” in our car audio syatems, so the you can see how the fit was perfect! Imagine, hearing yourself while in your own car!

Then, a new word, “Digital”, was spoken in some circles, but to me it seemed more like just a passing phase. How could ones and zeros record music? Wow, have things changed, and in a big way.

The home recording nut, now in search of a way to obtain great demos, just has so many paths to take these days! In fact, it might sometimes seem like too many paths. That is where I hope to help out. Let me shine some light on the newest and coolest things these days. Music gear for the Ipad!

IK Multimedia started out with some very cool stuff for the home recording nuts, and for our computers. However, with the realization that so many of us want to play wherever we happen to find ourselves, IK Multimedia quickly filled the niche with some very cool toys for our mobile devices like Iphones and Ipads. IK Multimedia has also pushed into the live show arena with such cool new products as the Imic and Vocalive too! With the Ipad, much more “real estate”, or a larger surface area for our fingers, became available and IK Multimedia has filled up that space with some great new apps.

IK Multimedia started out with some the best amp modeling software we could find for our home computers, of which, has grown into Amplitube 3. But, as fast paced as we try to be, we find ourselves missing practicing and playing as we are (all to often) away from our homes and/or practice space. The Ipad is a great device for entertaining ourselves, or as a great new tool for all of us musicians. Folks are finding cool new ways to incorporate their Ipads into their recording ventures and their live gigs. It is not uncommon these days to see an Ipad controlling such live show duties as guitar tones, vocal effects, sound mixing, and so much more. Wow.

Today, I want to show you what IK Multimedia has available for you singers, guitar and/or bass players, musicians of any type, lecturers, photographers, and this list goes on and on. Please, all of you live gigers and/or home recording nuts that are seeking a large screen and a “hands free” way to position and then hold onto your Ipad, please let me have your attention.

OK, so what happens when you combine the Irig , Amplitube, or Amplitube 2, perhaps the and the Ipad? Great new things!

Amplitube and now Amplitube 2, is down loadablee for both the Iphone and the Ipad, and the download can be found here. The Irig is a guitar/bass interface for the Ipad and/or the Iphone, and it can be purchased right here. The Iklip is a device that lets us mount our Ipads to any mic stand, and it can be found here. The Imic and Vocalive apps are both new from IK Multimedia, and the links given will take you where you need to go in order to learn more about them.

Some great ways to use the Iklip with your Ipad might be to hold your scanned sheet music, run your new IK Multimedia Vocalive app, run Amplitube , Amplitube 2 , or, well, the possibilities are endless! Whatever you use your Ipad for, Iklip is here to help!

Leave it to IK Multimedia, a forward thinking company that puts musicians first, to come up with such cool new ways to jam and sound so good!

IK Multimedia iRig Mic and Vocalive

Welcome to the dawning of a new age.... There is an app for that.

iRig Mic features an highly unidirectional condenser-electret capsule for both close mic and long distance mic conditions, plus a dual mini-jack connector for real time monitoring with headphones, mixers, powered speakers or PAs. A three-level gain switch allows instant adjustment - from soft speaking to loud playing.

iRig Mic will ship in the first quarter for only $59.99/EUR 49.99 (exc. Taxes) from IK music and electronic retailers worldwide. Pre-orders are already available.

VocaLive is the first professional vocal processor app for practicing, performing and recording on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

VocaLive offers a suite of 5 dedicated real-time vocal effects for singers and vocalists including pitch correction, choir harmonizer, voice doubler, vocal morpher and de-esser plus 7 effects tailored to vocal processing - reverb, EQ, compressor, delay, envelope filter, chorus and phaser - these can be combined in a 3 processors vocal rig.

Joe Barresi Evil Drums SDX Review

From the folks over at Platinum Samples, comes a new twist on a great product. I am talking about Evil Drums SDX. The “SDX” signifies that it now works with Toontracks Superior Drummer 2.0, within Pro Tools, as an RTAS plug in. These are great times....

So let us ponder something........

If we asked one of the hottest recording engineers in the biz (Joe Barresi) to record some of the most awesome, and perhaps the most popular drum kits of all time, using his favorite recording gear (mics, consoles,ect) in some of his favorite recording spaces, how do you think that little project might turn out? Hot, right?

Well, this is better than hot, and the whole recording industry knows it too! Truth be known, the industry has been using the Platinum Samples Joe Barresi Evil Drums samples on a lot of very popular hit records, and for some time now. Joe Barresi simply did an awesome job, and he used the best, most sought after gear in the biz to record the kits and samples. This is the best drum sample library out there, period!

On the Joe Barresi short list are such acts as (and in my own order) Tool, Anthrax, Clutch, Queens of the stone age, Bad Religion, Weezer, and Pennywise. Believe me, that is just to name a few.

The Platinum Samples Joe Barresi Evil Drums SDX package has this to say “Joe Barresi is synonymous with Rock having engineered and produced some of today's greatest rock bands. Featuring an ominous 6 full drum kits, 6 additional kicks and 6 additional snares, the Joe Barresi Evil Drums expansion pack is unlike any other. Recorded at two legendary rock studios onto analog tape using Studer tape machines, Neve consoles and his own crazy assortment of outboard gear, Joe Barresi has captured a diverse ensemble of drum sounds to create a unique and exquisitely evil expansion pack.”

The Joe Barresi Evil Drums sample pack ships on five DVD's, with a whopping 39 gig (full install)of samples. There is a smaller install version as well, with much less space required. It took some time to download onto my laptop, but that time is just money in the bank. These samples blew me away!

What else can I say about the Platinum Samples Joe Barresi Evil Drums sample pack? Well, I must say that as I work with it, it really feels as if I am in the studio room, and the drum rooms too! I can't explain it to you in any other way. As I closed my eyes, I felt as if I were right there, in front of the console! That is how awesome the the Platinum Samples Joe Barresi Evil Drums samples are recorded, and how amazing they sound!

The bottome line..... If you already own Toontracks Superior Drummer 2.0 and you happen to be looking for the best drum samples ever recorded, then rush out and grab your own copy of Platinum Samples Joe Barresi Evil Drums SDX and then get ready to be blown away! The Platinum Samples Joe Barresi Evil Drums are also available for other formats, like BFD, so make sure to check out the Platinum Samples Joe Barresi Evil Drums website for other versions!

Happy NEW Year!!!

Thank You Everyone!!!

With the arrival of 2011, I felt the need to try to recognize all of you that made a difference, and to say “thanks for stopping in every now and then”.

So, just what has happened over the last year to deserve such a post as this?

Well, in January of 2010, The Home Recording Weekly blog was sitting at a mere 170 visits each week, and that was on a good week. There were no video demos on the blog yet, and the readers simply had to “take my word” about the products that I reviewed. So, drastic times called for drastic measures, as they say.

In January of 2010 the Home Recording Weekly blog found its way over to the YouTube site, and created its own YouTube channel. There, it enjoyed a somewhat slow start, but, however, one by one, the visitors found there way. I started to see some traffic before very long. In just this one year, the YouTube traffic has clocked in some 20,000 visitors! To that I thank each and every one of you!

The color scheme of the blog changed rather all of a sudden, and a new logo came out of nowhere. Let's face the facts, the old green look was not growing on me. I hope the new look is fine with all of you that have been here long enough to have noticed the change.

Over the 2010 year, the Home Recording Weekly blog held six, month long songwriting contests, and gave away some cool prizes to the winners. Thanks for all of the awesome song contest entries, and a big thanks goes out to IK Multimedia and Toontrack software for donating all of the great prizes too! I can't wait to launch the songwriting contest again this year! Stay tuned for the contest start date, and the rules for entering this year!

Throughout this last year the Home Recording Weekly blog has also made its way around the web. You can find (both) snippets from; and links to; the Home Recording Weekly blog on such websites as KRK monitors, HomeGrown Premium Sound, 300 Guitars, Toontrack, Voice Counsel, and the SFX Pro's website. That is a big deal for me, and I would love to just say “thanks for all of the cool attention”!