James Russell
Bristol
Music software-ist and plugin hound // Responsible for the ungodly @a4ppodcast // Selected works at xoverfreq.com
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Articles by James Russell
“We can sidechain one track to another and make it so that the primary one ducks at the problem frequency range - a real timesaver!”: Digging into the enhanced abilities of today's EQ plugins to enhance your productions | Flipboard
IK Multimedia’s ARC Studio is a game-changing out-of-the-box acoustic room correction system that’s like an instant upgrade for your monitors - without the hassle of software-based solutions No matter where you record, produce, mix or master, if you’re using studio monitors, that space will influence the sound that you’re hearing inside …
Digging into the enhanced abilities of today's EQ plugins to enhance your productions
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. PRODUCER WEEK 2025: EQs come in all shapes and sizes, but the basic concepts are the same: take a signal with a distribution of frequencies, and output a signal with boosted or cut energy at certain points in that spectrum.
SOM’s New Terra-Cotta-Clad Headquarters for Disney Adds a Touch of Magic to Manhattan
On a full-block site, a rarity in high-density Manhattan, an enormous new corporate headquarters has risen. For its bulk, it is almost obsessively unshowy, though its oversize windows, framed in rounded extrusions of iridescent terra-cotta, reward notice along the street. Identified only as 7 Hudson Square, the 19-story Robert A. Iger Building gathers the disparate New York production and corporate operations of The Walt Disney Company into a single hub.
"An upgrade that’s all about creativity": PreSonus Studio One Pro 7 review
3 hours ago It’s a fun game for a Friday: Find the Mac mini in today’s featured setup photo, above. Or maybe it’s not so fun, because you’re doomed to failure. It’s not visible because the user mounted it on back of his 5K Samsung ViewFinity S9 external monitor (which just happens to look just like its …
ZGF Architects' Geo-Exchange System for Princeton Leads an Underground Revolution
Princeton University’s Myslik Field looks like many soccer stadiums, but beneath its manicured turf lie dozens of bore holes filled by plastic tubes that harvest the consistent temperature of the earth (around 56 degrees Fahrenheit) to heat and cool dozens of buildings on the sprawling campus.
Seattle Aquarium's Ocean Pavilion by LMN Helps Revitalize an Urban Waterfront
At the northern end of a 1.5-mile park nearing completion—a transformation of Seattle’s downtown waterfront—a rounded structure clad in Alaskan yellow cedar has risen. Urbanistically, it is a hinge that gracefully shifts the park’s flat shoreline promenade to the Overlook Walk, a series of planted staircases and pedestrian ramps that ascend a 110-foot-high bluff to draw the park up to the city’s famous Pike Place Market.
“A restrained update to the Seaboard Block”: Roli Seaboard Block M review
Roland Unveils the JUNO-D Synthesizer Series: Streamlined, Powerful, and Perfect for Modern Musicians Table of Contents • Built for Live Performers and Creators • Pricing and Availability • FAQs • Conclusion Roland is shaking up the synth world again with the …
The MPE masterclass: Express yourself with the new generation of software synths and hardware controllers
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Credit: Future Expressive performance is a topic of debate today. For hundreds of years, we’ve made do with instruments like pianos, and more recently electric pianos, and we haven’t spent much time complaining about what they can’t do. The best musicians don’t mind limits – they stick within them and work out how to turn limits to their advantage.
5 practical music theory tools to help you make better electronic music
5 practical music theory tools to help you make better electronic music Previously, we've published a frankly must-read guide on how to build your knowledge of music theory to make better electronic music. Now, we’re going …
Safdie Architects Returns to Singapore to Expand a Hotel Brand's Portfolio
Diagrammatically, Singapore’s eight-story Edition Hotel wraps a courtyard with its 204 rooms, sharing a through-block site with a 28-story, 154-unit apartment tower. In the hands of Safdie Architects, the development becomes considerably more bravura. It is as if a 60-foot-wide slot were cut to divide the apartment tower vertically in half and the slice then hinged downward to form a 290-foot-long bridge that rests on the roof of the hotel, extending over the sidewalks at each end.
7 ways to work smarter with MIDI in your DAW
7 ways to work smarter with MIDI in your DAW We’ve come a long way in our use of MIDI. When the standard was introduced in the 1980s, getting different instruments made by different …
7 ways to work smarter with MIDI in your DAW
We’ve come a long way in our use of MIDI. When the standard was introduced in the 1980s, getting different instruments made by different manufacturers to communicate with each other was a huge step forward. Decades later though, with MIDI firmly established and built into every piece of music hardware and software, we’ve transcended the basics, and human ingenuity has brought us to new creative heights. What is MIDI?
"There are certain laws that must be followed, whether you like it or not": Here's what producers really need to know about music theory
Over the past few years, Gretsch’s Streamliner range has experienced a meteoric rise in popularity thanks to their wallet-friendly pricing, superb …
Fort Worth’s Spring Gallery Night gives students a chance to show off their artwork
Janae Corrado was walking around the Fort Worth Community Arts Center when she saw the painting. It was one of many. But she kept going back. She didn’t recognize the name. But she didn’t care. She bought it. “I just thought, if I don’t collect it now, I won’t be able to afford it,” said Corrado, an art professor at Tarrant County College’s Trinity River campus. Turns out the artist is fittingly a student. Eli Ruhala is now in his second year studying for his master’s of fine arts in sculpture at TCU.
"Polyphonic aftertouch is another new feature that sees NI keeping up with modern demands in instrument design": Native Instruments Kontrol S61 Mk3 review
Six years on from its previous version, the ‘Komplete Kontrol’ keyboard range is now updated and renamed, with an expanded set of features. The Kontrol Mk3 brings a new, more robust spin on the MIDI keyboard’s chassis, and an interesting new look, right on down to the level of typography. The light guides are crisper and bolder. Getting hands-on, the feel of the buttons remains mostly the same as the Mk2, while the knobs and wheels have been replaced with anodised aluminium versions.
Continuing Education: Office Conversions
With hybrid and remote work schedules leaving millions of square feet of empty office space, “private owners are suffering,” says Eran Chen, a founder of the New York architecture firm ODA. “They may lose buildings to their banks; cities are losing real-estate tax dollars,” he adds.
A+I and Lighting Workshop Rejuvanate the Lobby of Penn 1
In contrast to the prevailing predilection in Manhattan for defining prestige and status through lobbies slathered in gleaming white marble, lit as intensely as an operating theater, the firm Architecture Plus Information (A+I) assembled a mainly subdued palette of wood, stone, and bronze at Penn 1, a 57-story tower designed by Kahn and Jacobs, adjacent to New York’s main rail hub, Pennsylvania Station.
5 music theory tools to help you make better electronic music
The 20 Most Famous Books of All Time How does a book become one of the most famous books of all time? What makes a book stick in our collective consciousness? How do some titles sound …
5 music theory tools to help you make better electronic music
Yesterday, we published a guide on how to build your knowledge of music theory to help you make better electronic music. Today, we’re about to round up a few pieces of software that know it all already, and can help you to get it right. Some of these tools will be able to suggest chords to fit into a progression, or a melody that will go over the top of what you have already, while some are just facilitators for getting your notes in order, or doing something you already know more quickly.
What is spectral processing? Get to know the technology behind the next generation of effects plugins
GEAR EXPO 2023: The essential new audio interfaces and mixers of 2023 GEAR EXPO 2023: Audio interfaces are the essential devices you need to get sound into and out of your computer. And a mixer enables you to mix …
What is spectral processing? Get to know the technology behind the next generation of effects plugins
Spectral effects are a relatively new area of technology, and in recent years their popularity has really taken off. Developers from all over the world have been releasing plugins using a new buzzword: spectral processing. iZotope, Sonible, Mastering The Mix and plenty more have all gotten in on the action – but what exactly can they do? First of all, note that spectral processing is a technology that’s only possible in the digital domain.
6 drum processing techniques to help you program state-of-the-art beats
22 hours ago When Ry Cooder famously made his debut appearance at Glastonbury, playing on the Pyramid stage on a damp day in June 1990, he chose not to be backed by a band but by a second guitarist who came on sporting bright red trousers, and hair and sideburns that were very long, even by rock music …
Brotherhood Sister Sol's Mission of Transformative Support for At-Risk Youth Gets a New Home in Harlem
Main entrance on West 143 Street. Photo by Chris Cooper The fissured, faceted prow of The Brotherhood Sister Sol new headquarters ruptures the dour street wall of Harlem’s West 143rd Street. This pugnacious gesture matches the nonprofit’s outsize mission to comprehensively support low-income Black and Latino young people.
Why You'll Never Afford a House
When I bought my first house, in Philadelphia, I had the privilege of paying mortgage interest of 13 percent on a property that was priced low ($41,000) but which was tiny and barely habitable. That was in the mid 1980s, several years after Paul Volcker, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, had begun aggressive interest-rate hikes to strangle inflation.
Diamond Schmitt and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Reimagine David Geffen Hall
Does a concert hall with great natural sound matter anymore? People can access beautifully recorded music through their computers, mobile devices, and home audio/video equipment. Saddled with a dreary, substandard 2,738-seat hall with a dwindling audience, Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic had to face a hard question: what would persuade people to leave the comforts of home and pay to hear a live performance?
A Friendlier, More Intimate David Geffen Hall Makes its New York Debut
The audience for the inaugural public concerts at the overhauled David Geffen Hall at New York’s Lincoln Center passed through a raised garage-style glass door and—instead of what had been a cramped, beige lobby—entered a soigné space, twice as large, furnished with serpentine couches and club chairs upholstered in orange, chartreuse, and bold stripes.
Water and Resilience
By Architectural Record Learning Objectives: Explain how green infrastructure can be used to bolster traditional hard infrastructure for flood control. Describe how green infrastructure tactics can be used to remove pollutants from stormwater. Discuss measures implemented by two recent art museums as protection from flooding. Outline the testing regimen for hurricane-resistant glazing.
Architecture & Money
Learning Objectives: Discuss some of the legal and technological developments of recent decades that have prompted a reexamination of how architects charge for their services and what kinds of services they provide. Describe project-delivery methods that are alternatives to design-bid-build, and explain how they are helping some firms be more profitable. Discuss the benefits and drawbacks that firms encounter when they merge with or acquire other firms.
Innovations in Glass
An exploration of how architects are pushing the limits of technology to exploit the mutable nature of glass, its aesthetic qualities, and its energy-conserving potential. By Architectural Record Learning Objectives: Discuss glass manufacturing processes as well as fabrication options and limitations that architects should take into account while designing glazed building skins. Define terms relevant to glass and glazing selection, such as VLT, U-value, and solar heat gain coefficient.
Tribute: Paul Gunther (1956-2022)
Paul Gunther, who died in May at the age of 65, was an advocate, curator, and executive at major New York City civic, architectural, and preservation organizations. For decades, he helped the public appreciate architecture’s significance and the crucial role it plays in enriching urban identity. Though sunny with an easy sociability, Gunther was subject to depression. He died after a suicide attempt. Gunther was not an architect: his bachelor’s degree from Yale was in art history.
Design Vanguard 2022: CO Adaptive
The term “adaptive” in the name of Ruth Mandl and Bobby Johnston’s Brooklyn-based firm may sound like a buzzword but is an apt description of their work. They focus exclusively on renovating and adapting existing buildings. Though one of their first projects was the renovation of a classic 19th-century Brooklyn brownstone, historic preservation was aligned with a substantial reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions and an elegant, even whimsical, way of reusing existing elements.
Fighting Flooding in Houston and New York
With disruptions and disasters supercharged by climate change now happening more frequently, resiliency—the business of protecting communities from threats, or adapting to them—becomes more urgent. After thousands of square miles of metro Houston were inundated by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the city and Harris County implemented impressive large-scale and community-enhancing flood-management projects—yet they are not enough, and too often continue to fail the most vulnerable.
Foster Unveils Design for Low-Energy New York Supertall
Dwarfed by an enormous American flag hanging from the steel framing of what will become an 80-foot-high lobby, executives at JPMorgan Chase (JPMC) and elected officials unveiled the design of 270 Park Avenue with unusual defiance two days after 30 people were injured in a Brooklyn subway station shooting during the morning rush hour commute.
Williams and Tsien Bring Colorful Reconfigured Public Spaces to Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall
The New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center unveiled new details of the redesign of the perpetually troubled 1962 David Geffen Hall on March 9, as contractors rush to complete the project for an October 2022 opening.
NXTHVN by Deborah Berke Partners
In neighborhoods around the country, architects, designers, and artists of color are rediscovering public places and building new ones that tell stories of and re-engage the local community. Architect Emmanuel Pratt’s Sweetwater Foundation and artist Theaster Gates’s Rebuild Foundation are just two examples, both seeding new creative and urban energy on emptied blocks on the south side of Chicago, having been inspired by artist Rick Lowe’s pioneering Project Row Houses in Houston.
Though Beloved, Midcentury Modern Houses Are Vanishing
The sudden late-January demolition of the Geller House, an influential 1945 design by Marcel Breuer, was greeted with widespread dismay. Modern preservationists and Docomomo US pleaded to save the house, in Lawrence, a suburb of New York City, but the current owners decided to destroy it anyway.
Samuel Powel Elementary School and Science Leadership Academy Middle School by Rogers Partners
Where the corners of a new public school building in West Philadelphia form knuckles in plan, angular stairways topped by clerestories reconcile the skewed U-shaped geometry imposed by the site, creating diagonal vistas, intriguing views, and diverse spaces illuminated by an abundance of ever-changing daylight. Reconciliation, in fact, could be the theme of this 87,000-square-foot structure, hosting two schools, designed by the New York firm Rogers Partners Architects+Urban Designers.
New York’s David Geffen Hall Plans a Fall 2022 Reopening
The much-anticipated 1962 opening of Philharmonic Hall, a gleaming pavilion in travertine and glass at New York’s Lincoln Center, turned out to be an acoustical disaster, with the sound lambasted by critics—and players flummoxed by an inability to hear each other. The architecture firm Harrison and Abramowitz had to stand back as a parade of sound experts tinkered for years with the acoustics designed by Bolt Beranek and Newman.
These Simple Design Schemes Can Help Combat Climate Change for Coastal Cities
Rain gardens, little watercourses with water burbling over gravel fringed with a variety of water-loving plants, are becoming a more common sight along sidewalks across America. Amid the asphalt square miles of cities, these mini islands of engineered nature—technically bioswales—are among several natural-system solutions that work hard to manage stormwater runoff. That task may seem prosaic but they are changing city dwellers’ relationship to water.
The Difference Between 2 Popular Types
Introduction A good posture can help you stay relaxed yet focused without straining your backbone. Usually, people overlook their poses and end up getting backaches and shoulder pain. To get rid of this pain, it is ideal for maintaining a good posture. Luckily, some chairs help you maintain your posture in the office or a gaming studio. However, a single chair type is not ideal for both office and gaming sessions. Therefore, in this guide, we will tell you all about a gaming chair vs office chair.
Johns Hopkins Loses a Gem by Williams and Tsien
The delicate glass-and-metal studios enclosed by the long, low brick walls of the Mattin Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore are coming down. It is a significant loss because it is a deceptively modest but exceedingly rich building by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien—and it is just 20 years old. The Mattin was a 50,000-square-foot center for visual arts, dance, and theater in three structures surrounding an intimate courtyard.
Public Space Portfolio
Various proposals nationwide show how parks and common areas can be created from a torn urban fabric. L.A.: Light-rail leads to lookouts and art display Image courtesy Perkins + Will, click to enlarge. Los Angeles’s Crenshaw Boulevard is often considered the premier artery of African-American commerce and culture in the western United States. “Crenshaw is to L.A. what 125th Street is to Harlem,” as one local leader put it.
The Future of Affordable Housing
As the economy shut down in the early weeks of the pandemic, homebuilders girded for the worst. And sales did collapse—briefly. But by late spring 2020, rental and sales activity rebounded, especially in desirable suburbs and lower-cost, amenity-rich cities like Boise, Idaho.
How to House the Homeless by Rosanne Haggerty
Rosanne Haggerty opened Common Ground in 1990; it has become one of the nation’s most successful builders of insightfully designed housing, with supportive services for the formerly homeless. Ten years ago, she founded the nonprofit Community Solutions and began to show how homelessness is a solvable problem using her organization’s systematic, data-driven approach (RECORD, March 2013 and October 2018).
Continuing Education: The Office of the Future
There’s a lot of prognostication about the future workplace as the Covid pandemic has begun to retreat and more people are vaccinated. Organizations are examining whether their business needs demand a full return to office work, or whether they should become a fully virtual organization—given the success of remote work over the last 15 months—or whether they should deploy a hybrid strategy.
Design Vanguard 2021: Bright Common
Fishtown, an early-19th century working-class neighborhood in Philadelphia that languished during decades of de-industrialization, has become a hotbed of creative industries. Its narrow streets of modest row houses, remnant factories, and spectacular churches now include assertive collages of contemporary colors and materials as architects explore ideas free (for better or worse) of constraints imposed by strict historic preservation elsewhere in the city.
Memories of my Sephardi grandparents from Greece, Morocco and Brooklyn
At the time of her birth it was one of the great ports of the Ottoman Empire. Her forebears on that side of our family had fled to safety in Muslim Turkey from Toledo in 1492 following the infamous edict of expulsion by Ferdinand and Isabella.
Little Island Opens with Big Crowd-Pleasing Ambitions
Trees and shrubs undulate like a tousled green crown in a forest of precast-concrete pilings rising out of the Hudson River that unfurl into interlocking tulip-shaped containers for the landscape within. This eye-catching spectacle is Little Island, an addition to the Hudson River Park just north of Renzo Piano’s Whitney Museum on the western edge of Manhattan. It opened May 21.
Carol Willis on the State of the Supertall
Will the appeal of Skyscrapers endure, even as pundits again predict the end of the office version—thanks to remote work? RECORD spoke with Carol Willis, the founding director of the Skyscraper Museum in Manhattan, to take the temperature of commercial construction’s hothouse flower—the supertall.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art Opens Long-Awaited Gehry-designed Galleries and Public Spaces
Most of the great museums built around the turn of the 20th century have been added to, some numerous times. The 640,000-square-foot 1928 Philadelphia Museum of Art is an exception. Although many of its interior spaces had been altered, the honey-toned Kasota-limestone exterior remains almost unchanged from when it was completed by Horace Trumbauer and his senior designer, the African-American architect Julian Abele, in collaboration with Zantzinger, Borie, and Medary.
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