Matthew J Barnhart

After ears and good monitoring, my notebook is the most important piece of equipment I have in the studio. I log details about every session in it: musicians’ names, microphone choice and position, signal path (mic preamps, compressors, etc), instrument and amplifier settings, and, most importantly, stuff I tried that didn’t work.

Some session notes are more in-depth than others, but I always write something. This particular notebook goes back to the Fall of 2006, and has saved my bacon more times than I can count. (“How the hell did I record the clarinet on that Shearwater record?”) It’s also helped me out of ruts (i.e. trying something other than a Royer ribbon mic on guitar amps once in a while). I couldn’t work without it.