Musings from the basement...

How to Choose the Best Home Studio Monitors

April 17, 2017 1 Comment

Your studio monitors are an often overlooked but absolutely critical part of your home studio setup. They play an integral role in ensuring your recording, mixing, and mastering all sound as good as possible. And whether you’re a hobbyist or a professional, it goes without saying that you want the music you produce to sound as good as it possibly can. Choosing the best studio monitors can be a little tricky – they are not one-size-fits-all pieces of equipment suitable for any space or user – but by following the below tips you can make a choice that will benefit your work for years to come. What is the Cost? This should probably seem obvious, but your budget is going to play a big role…
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Music

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SUNDAY SIPS: 5 Great Beers From the Garden State

April 15, 2017 3 Comments

Despite getting distribution from more breweries than almost any other state in the nation, New Jersey doesn’t have a great beer reputation. That’s because unlike states like California, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Oregon and others, it doesn’t have a wealth of fantastic in-state breweries. Or rather, it didn’t used to. That’s changing. Here are five beers worth checking out from the Garden State. Kane Head High IPA New Jersey may not have the brewing bona fides that Pennsylvania boasts, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some outstanding beers worth paying attention to coming out of the Garden State. Take a tour of some great beer bars in the region and you’ll find more than a few NJ brews worth drinking. Head High from Kane, for instance, is…
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Craft Beer

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The Fast & the Furious, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Franchise

April 12, 2017 40 Comments

The last movies I ever expected to love were those ridiculous The Fast & the Furious flicks. Meathead street racer nonsense starring silly actors doing silly things in silly suped up cars as annoying as the ones that buzz around at 1am being far louder than a little lime green import has any right to be? Ugh. No. Several friends kept insisting the series was secretly amazing, though, a bunch of movies that were more like comic books come to life than, say, the latest Batman or Superman movie or Caligula. Okay, okay, fine. Facing some empty late nights and some bags of chips that needed eating, I figured I’d marathon the movies. Figured they’d at least give me something to do when trying to shut down…
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Films

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SUNDAY SIPS: 5 Saisons For Spring

April 9, 2017 1 Comment

Spring has sprung! One of the best parts of the warming weather is enjoying beers that match with the season. There are few styles I like more in the spring than a saison. Here are five worth drinking. 21st Amendment Sneak Attack Now that the weather has finally turned and it looks to be mostly sunny days ahead, the saison is going to become the style of choice for many craft beer lovers. No surprise there. There is something about the saison that feels like open air and bright spring days. Of course, some brewers, such as 21st Amendment, buck traditional by making their saison a winter seasonal. That’s okay. A saison is a saison no matter the time of year. This one has a…
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Craft Beer

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Peppers are just another adventure, except without broken limbs

April 7, 2017 0 Comments

Peppers are an adventure. They’re not supposed to grow in the suburbs of New Jersey. They don’t belong in this part of the world, but we’re humans. We do what we want with Mother Nature (right up to the point where she does what she wants with us). We never really had success growing peppers in our yard, and that always disappointed me. All we wanted was some regular ol’ bell peppers. As a kid, I learned from my good friend Chris to eat them like apples, but with a salt shaker in hand. Bite, dash of salt, bite, dash of salt, until the whole thing was gone. So that’s how I came to love sweet peppers. Hot peppers were another story. I didn’t have the…
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Gardening, Random Musings

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