This episode archive includes gear deep-dives, synth setups, MIDI puzzles, wiring disasters, and the occasional small victory. Each year is organized into a season. Click any title to watch the episode and download companion PDFs when available.
The Steep Climb at the Start—and Why It Gets Easier One thing I noticed throughout this entire studio redesign is that, without much surprise, everything became easier the further into the process I got. When I first started, it felt like I was at zero—fully aware...
Clarity That Only Comes With Time One of the more subtle—but important—things I experienced during my studio makeover was clarity over time. Once I reached roughly the middle of the process—after the struggle of deciding where the mixer would live, after rewiring...
When Plans Stretch Beyond the Timeline While I don’t want to give away all of my plans for 2026—because, as I’ve learned, plans have a way of changing—there are still a few major pieces of my studio that remain unfinished. I haven’t fully worked out my MIDI...
Working Outside My Comfort Zone Working outside of my comfort zone is not something I’m particularly known for. I don’t like change much. Change inside my studio—new gear, new toys, new ideas—I love. Change elsewhere? Not so much. As I’ve mentioned in previous...
Rethinking Workflow, Gear, and What It’s All For In my previous post, I wrote about working outside of your comfort zone and mentioned how that led me to purchasing the AKAI Force and Native Instruments Maschine+. That decision didn’t come out of nowhere. It was...
Repurposing Old Gear: Giving Controllers a Second Life Throughout my studio redesign, there’s been a small thread running quietly in the background. It was never a major theme of the build, but it kept resurfacing often enough that it’s worth talking about:...
Why I Chose Hardware (Even When Software Makes More Sense) First, I want to be absolutely clear: I’m ecstatic about my studio’s transformation from a software-based studio to a hardware-based one. I’ve enjoyed every step of the redesign process. While I still...
The Knowledge Curve I Didn’t See Coming One thing I wasn’t prepared for—though I really should have been—was just how much knowledge a hardware studio demands. As my studio redesign began to spiral (in the best and worst ways), gear kept arriving at a pace that was...
Turn It Off and On Again Sometimes things just don’t work. That’s the magic of turning the power switch off and on again. One of the issues I ran into during my studio redesign wasn’t the gear itself — it was my attitude. Somewhere along the way, I started...
When Gear Becomes “Legacy” Later in my studio redesign, I started thinking about building a stand for the AKAI Advance49 — a keyboard controller that, as it turns out, is no longer in production. That thought led me down a familiar path. The Korg Prologue? No...
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