Newswire
The Panama Sound Newswire is a living archive of field notes from the studio—observations, experiments, frustrations, small victories, and hard-earned clarity from inside the recording process. This is where I document what actually works (and what absolutely doesn’t). Expect essays on vibe, sessions, technology-as-tool-not-religion, and the quiet moments that don’t show up on spec sheets. New posts land weekly. Read slowly. Take what you need. Leave the rest.
The Five Session Mistakes
The Five Session Mistakes You’ve saved up. You’ve booked the session. You’re finally going to capture your songs with professional gear in a focused environment. Then the session ends, and you’re wondering where the time went. Here’s the pattern I see repeatedly: most artists sabotage their sessions before they’ve even set up. The mistakes are
Am I Ready for the Studio? (How to Know You’re Prepared)
Are You Ready for the Studio? You’ve been sitting on those songs for months—maybe years—waiting until they’re perfect. Until you can play them flawlessly. Until you feel like a “real” musician instead of someone still figuring out that tricky bridge section. Here’s the truth: you’re probably more ready than you think. And the things you’re
Let It Bleed: Why We Don’t Fear Mic Spill
Let’s talk about bleed, mic spill, leakage. That dreaded phenomenon where the kick drum bleeds into the snare mic, the guitar amp sneaks into the vocal take, and the whole band decides to have a party in every microphone simultaneously. The Glue When a band plays together in the same space and there’s mic spill
Stop Dreaming of That Song and Start Making It
There’s something weirdly magical about New Year’s Day, isn’t there? The world feels like a freshly wiped whiteboard—no scribbles, no crossed‑out ideas, just clean space begging for your wildest plans. You open a new folder for the year, your voice memos and scratch tracks feel less like clutter and more like clues.
A Talk with Todd Rundgren
Picture this: It’s 1991. I’m 14 years old, standing in the Exploratorium in San Francisco with my dad, about to watch Todd Rundgren—the Todd Rundgren—give a lecture on digital recording formats. If you weren’t alive in 1991, let me set the scene: Digital recording was revolutionary and borderline mystical. Most people were still dubbing cassettes
