“When you try to do everything, you’re weak in some places”: Blink-182’s Travis Barker on why it’s important to delegate in the studioTravis Barker has built a reputation not just as Blink-182’s powerhouse drummer but as a go-to producer for artists like Machine Gun Kelly, Avril Lavigne, and Fever 333.
Now, in a new studio tour video, Barker pulls back the curtain on his creative process, sharing insights on music production, gear selection, and the art of collaboration.

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Reflecting on how Blink-182’s recording process has evolved over time, Barker explains [via MusicRadar]: “The way Blink albums were written, was a different style of production to what happens now. The songs would be written and we would just go in and record them.”
“Trav, you’re gonna come in and you’re gonna record all your drums in one day… For the entire album… I’d be like, ‘OK you guys. See you in three months… And Mark and Tom would stay there for three months and record guitars and vocals.”
“But when I was there for some guitar stuff [Producer Jerry Finn] would be like, ‘You can play better than that. Play it right. You can think of a better part than that – you can beat it. Seeing him do that kind of stuff was really helpful,” Barker adds. “He was very good about making sure that everyone’s ideas were heard and challenging everyone to play as good as they could.”
The studio tour also sees Barker showcasing his enviable collection of gear, from the Ludwig Black Beauties to Sonor’s HLD-590 Signature Cast Bronze snare drum. But despite his extensive collection, the drummer stresses that expensive equipment isn’t what makes a great musician.
“If I was just playing in Blink, or if I was just practicing, I’ll play on your drum kit,” he says. “I never want kids to think like you have to have the best drum kit. I could play Blink shows all around the world on rental kits if I needed to.”
“It’s really about practicing and you’ll make any kit sound good. You take like the best drummer and put him on the trashiest kit, and he’s gonna be great.”
Elsewhere, Barker also reveals his weapon of choice in the control room – the Neve 5088 Mixing Console.
After struggling with an older 1970s Neve that constantly needed repairs (“we recorded a lot of stuff with it,” says Barker), he upgraded to the modern version, trading in his vintage board for a more reliable unit.
“Some days we’d all show up to work and it’d be like, ‘I’m not working today’, and I’d have to get some wizard to come through and spend days with it to get it working again,” he recalls. “There was one guy that could fix it. I couldn’t rely on it any more.”
And while Barker has developed a sharp ear for production over the years, he, too, acknowledges the importance of trusting other experts in the studio.
“I’ve recorded. I’ve written. I’ve done all of the pre-production where I listen to everything solo-ed. I listen to every bass track soloed. Whatever I’m looking for, I do all that stuff. Then I really feel comfortable sending it off to get mixed and trusting the process,” he says.
“I really respect them as mixers and I’m going to them for a reason. I find that when you try to do everything, you’re weak in some places, you know?”
Watch the full video below.

The post “When you try to do everything, you’re weak in some places”: Blink-182’s Travis Barker on why it’s important to delegate in the studio appeared first on MusicTech.

Kanye West drops surprise Bully album – but did he clear the samples?Between selling Nazi T-shirts, social media attacks on Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and Playboi Carti, and a general commitment to burning bridges, Kanye West has still found time to release new music.
In a move as chaotic as his recent online antics, West surprised fans early Wednesday (19 March) by leaking his own album, Bully, via X. The release came alongside a 30-minute wrestling-themed short film, directed by famed music video director Hype Williams and starring Ye’s son, Saint West.
Despite the unorthodox rollout, Bully quickly became a hot topic – not just for its content but for the murky legal waters surrounding its use of samples.

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Musically, Bully – which includes previously teased cuts like Preacher Man, Beauty and the Beast, and Highs and Lows – appears to follow Ye’s recent trend of playing fast and loose with copyright law.
Among the most glaring inclusions are a straight-up cover of Can’s 1972 song Vitamin C on the second half of the track Take My Last Breath Away and interpolations of classics like Close to You by Burt Bacharach and Hal David (famously performed by The Carpenters) and You Can’t Hurry Love by the Supremes. His collaborator-turned-rival Playboi Carti also appears on the track Melrose despite their recent public feud.

Other potential sample sources include Cortex’s Huit octobre 1971, Poncho Sanchez’s Bésame Mamá, and Pomme’s Soleil Soleil. Notably, Pomme has previously denied Ye permission to use her music. Back in January, the French singer-songwriter publicly addressed an unreleased track by Ye that sampled her 2019 song Soleil Soleil without her consent after a video snippet of the rapper – presumably from one of his Bully sessions – surfaced online.

New Ye snippet surfaced probably for Bully pic.twitter.com/6xYUYhT3Mg
— VZN (@vznfeed) January 4, 2025

Pomme released a statement on Instagram at the time, stating, “I have never given my consent for the use of this sample for reasons that seem obvious to me, being in deep disagreement with the political positions of this artist that I have nevertheless admired in the past.”

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Ye’s history with uncleared samples is well-documented. His 2018 track Lift Yourself, for instance, contained two uncleared samples, including one from Trax Records, which prompted re-negotiations for ownership of the track. And last April, underground producer TSVI accused Ye of sampling his music without permission on the latter’s 2021 album Donda. He also criticised the rapper for repeatedly sampling independent artists “without any repercussions”.
“I’ve seen stories of him stealing samples from other producers in the underground music scene, and it sucks,” TSVI said in a now-deleted post on X. “We producers are at the bottom of the chain; he’s at the top with billions in his bank account, with a team of producers who have complete freedom to sample whatever they want. He has an infinite sample pack at his disposal, which he can use as he pleases, without any repercussions.”
Adding to the confusion, Ye himself has claimed that “half the vocals” on Bully are generated using AI, which certainly raises questions about artists’ credits and legal liability.
Complicating matters even more is the way Bully was distributed. It isn’t an official album on streaming platforms like Spotify or Apple Music, which have established copyright policies. Instead, it was shared through X and a file-sharing app — platforms that exist in even murkier legal territory.
The post Kanye West drops surprise Bully album – but did he clear the samples? appeared first on MusicTech.

Ed Sheeran pens open letter urging UK government to invest £250 million in music education “to repair decades of dismantling music”Singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran has penned an open letter to UK government officials, calling for both immediate and long-term funding into music education.
The letter, co-signed by music icons including Fred Again, Elton John, Coldplay, Central Cee, Harry Styles, Stormzy, and Robert Plant, urges British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to commit £250 million towards music education “to repair decades of dismantling music”.

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This follows the launch of the Ed Sheeran Foundation in January, a nationwide initiative aimed at providing inclusive, high quality music education.
“As an industry, we bring in £7.6bn into the UK economy, yet the next generation is not there to take the reins,” the letter states. “Last year was the first in over 20 years without a UK global top 10 single or album in the charts.”
“The time to act is now. State schools – which educate 93% of the country’s children – have seen a 21% decrease in music provision.”
“Artists and industry can’t deliver on the world stage for the UK without schools, youth clubs and stages at home,” it continues. “We collectively ask for a £250m UK music education package this Spring to repair decades of dismantling music. Music education is cross-departmental: Culture, Education, Foreign Office, Health & Social Care and Business & Trade.”
“We understand that there are many pressures,” the letter concludes. “As artists, civil society and industry, we want to be part of the solution.”
The call for action follows high-profile speeches at the BRIT Awards earlier this month, including from Rising Star winner Myles Smith, who has also endorsed the letter.
While accepting his award, Smith urged the government, venue conglomerates, and music executives to do more to support emerging artists.
“I was a kid raised by a single mum on free school meals in a state school that only had instruments because of government-backed schemes. And I’m somehow here, a four time BRIT nominee, a graduate from a Russell Group university and having the biggest hit single of 2024,” Smith said [via NME].
“But tonight, whilst I have the attention of the nation, and this award which gives me this really cool speaking power, I want to ask three questions. My first is to the government – if British music is one of the most powerful cultural exports we have, why have we treated it like an afterthought for so many years?”
“How many more venues need to close, how many music programs need to be cut before we realise that we can’t just celebrate success, we have to protect the foundations that make it.”

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Buy now, pay later . . . for a burrito?In 2010, a programmer who was mining bitcoin famously made the comically expensive mistake of spending 10,000 bitcoin on two pizzas. As of this writing, those coins would be worth $850 million dollars. While there are few comparisons to that kind of miscalculation, the prospect of adding interest payments to fast-food orders is raising concerns […]

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RTL-SDR with Only a BrowserSurely by now you’ve at least heard of RTL-SDR — a software project that let’s cheap TV tuner dongles work as a software-defined radios. A number of projects and tools have spun off the original effort, but in his latest video, [Tech Minds] shows off a particularly unique take. It’s a Web browser-based radio application that uses WebUSB, so it doesn’t require the installation of any application software. You can see the program operating in the video below.
There are a few things you should know. First, you need the correct USB drivers for your RTL-SDR. Second, your browser must support WebUSB, of course. Practically, that means you need a Chromium-type browser. You may have to configure your system to allow raw access to the USB port, too.
Watching the video, you can see that it works quite well. According to the comments, it will work with a phone, too, which is an interesting idea. The actual Web application is available as open source. It isn’t going to compete with a full-fledged SDR program, but it looked surprisingly complete.
These devices have grown from a curiosity to a major part of radio hacking over the years. Firefox users can’t use WebUSB — well, not directly, anyway.

Vaults: Acid Synth from The Crow Hill Company The latest addition to The Crow Hill Company’s series of free instruments recreates the sound of the short-lived synth that sparked the birth of acid house. 

Charlie Javice trial becomes a master class in hubris for both sidesCharlie Javice’s high-profile fraud trial has become a showcase of embarrassing missteps on both sides, with eyebrow-raising details about how JPMorgan Chase was allegedly deceived into buying her startup, Frank, for $175 million when it had just 300,000 customers instead of four million. Per a new WSJ article, one pivotal moment came when former Frank […]

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Card Radios RememberedWe know how [Techmoan] feels. In the 1980s we had a bewildering array of oddball gadgets and exciting new tech. But as kids we didn’t have money to buy a lot of what we saw. But he had a £5 note burning a hole in his pocket from Christmas and found a Casio RD-10 “card radio” on sale and grabbed it. He’s long-ago lost that one, but he was able to find a new old stock one and shows us the little gadget in the video below.
The card-thin (1.9 mm) FM radio had many odd features, especially for the 1980s. For one thing, it took a coin cell, which was exotic in those days. The headphones had a special flat connector that reminded us of an automotive fuse. Even the idea of an earbud was odd at that time.

It was a good idea not to lose the earbud, as it had that strange connector. The earbud worked as the antenna and power switch, too. Oddly enough, you could get a slightly fatter AM radio version, and they even made one that was AM and FM. Unsurprisingly, Casio even made a version with a calculator built-in. It had a solar cell, but that only powers the calculator. You still needed the coin cell for the radio.
The sound? Meh. But what did you expect? There was a stereo version, too. However, that one had a rechargeable battery, which was not in good health after a few decades. He also shows a Sony card radio that is a bit different. We were hoping for a teardown, especially of the rechargeable since it was toast, anyway, but for now, we’ll have to imagine what’s inside.
We love nostalgic radios, although usually they are a little older. We miss the days when a kid might think it was cool to see an ad touting: “Oh boy! We’re radio engineers!”

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Elektron update Digitakt II & Digitone II The Digitakt II and Digitone II have just received an update that sees them exchange some current features with each other, as well as gaining some entirely new functions. 

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Rhodes unveil the Stage 61 Rhodes' new passive 61-key tine piano promises to capture the signature feel and sound of a Rhodes but in a more portable, gig-ready design