Category Archives for "Book Excerpt"
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Celebrating The Influence Of Mastering Engineer Doug Sax
It’s hard to underestimate the influence that engineer Doug Sax had on the business of mastering. He was one of the first independent mastering engineers and literally defined the art when he opened his world-famous Mastering Lab in Hollywood in 1967. Sadly, Doug passed away in 2015, but his magic remains a big part of […]
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Michael Bishop Talks Orchestral Recording
There are few more versatile engineers today than Michael Bishop, easily switching between the classical, jazz, and pop worlds with ease. Shunning the current recording method requiring massive overdubbing, Michael instead mostly utilizes the “old school” method of mixing live on the fly with spectacular results. A former chief engineer for the audiophile Telarc label […]
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Checking Drum Phase By Using Your Ears
The chances for a phase problem are far greater on the drum kit than in almost any other band-level situation because it usually has more mics on it than any other instrument. That said, there is a simple technique for checking for a problem as outlined in this excerpt from the 4th edition of my […]
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Improve Your Mix Workflow With These 5 Prep Steps
These days a typical session has plenty of tracks that won’t be used in the final mix. Deleting or hiding these tracks and then putting the rest in a logical order can be the single most useful thing you can do while prepping your mix. In this excerpt from the 4th edition of my Mixing […]
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10 Questions To Ask During Band Preproduction That Will Make You Sound Better
Preproduction is the best time to work out any kinks in songs and arrangements way before you begin to record. Chances are that there will come a time when your band is playing either in rehearsal or in the studio and suddenly there’s a train wreck where something sounds way off, and you may have […]
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Mixing Nashville In The Box With Influential Engineer Ed Seay
Getting his start in Atlanta in the 70s engineering and producing hits for Paul Davis, Peabo Bryson, and Melissa Manchester, Ed Seay has become one of the most respected and influential engineers in Nashville since moving there in 1984. With hit-making clients such as Blake Shelton, Lee Brice, Martina McBride, Ricky Skaggs, Dolly Parton, Pam […]
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4 Band Rehearsal Tips That Will Make You Better
Rehearsals are the life-blood of a band. Whether you’re neophyte players in the garage or a bunch of A-listers in the studio reading down a chart, you want to get the song down so it sounds great as quickly as possible. Here are 4 band rehearsal tips from my How To Make Your Band Sound Great book […]
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Drum Tuning Techniques Every Engineer Should Know
There’s no doubt that getting a drum sound is the number one priority for any recording that has a drummer. Sometimes you luck out and the drums sound great by just putting the mics in front of them, but other times they require more care in order to make them sound the way you want. […]
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A Look At The 5 Song Arrangement Elements
One of the major jobs of both a producer and a mixer is to arrange the song if needed (and it usually is). Anyone that’s been working in a studio for a while learns that there are 5 kinds of arrangement elements that make up a song. You can have fewer than 5 happening simultaneously […]
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3 Techniques For Miking An Audience
If you’re recording a live performance, then you want to pick up some of the audience to make it sound realistic. Here are some techniques and considerations culled from the latest edition of my Recording Engineer’s Handbook. “Audience recording is both the key and the problem with live recording. It’s sometimes difficult to record the audience […]
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The Correct Understanding Of Gigging Language
It’s time for something different. Here’s an excerpt from How To Make Your Band Sound Great that talks about how understanding some basic gigging language can be the secret to getting your band booked. This is a repost from about 3 years ago from my old blog, but I’m sure many of you haven’t seen it yet. […]
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How A Vinyl Record Is Pressed
There’s so much attention given to vinyl these days that I though it might be a good idea to cover exactly what goes into actually pressing a record. It’s actually a primitive process by today’s standards, and it’s pretty amazing that they sound as good as they do. Here’s an excerpt from the 4rth edition […]
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The Legendary Ken Scott Talks Mixing
Legendary producer Ken Scott began his career at the Abbey Road Studios working with The Beatles on The White Album and Magical Mystery Tour; on six David Bowie albums, including the seminal Ziggy Stardust album; and with Pink Floyd, Elton John, Duran Duran, Jeff Beck, Supertramp, Procol Harum, Devo, Kansas, Mahavishnu Orchestra, and many more. […]
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8 Things To Check Before You Push The Record Button
“Everything set up? Cool, let’s record. Oh, wait, it doesn’t sound like I think it should.” At this point you can continue to record and deal with the consequences later, or stop and troubleshoot, but you might be chasing your tail and it could take longer than you want to get to where you want […]
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Good Things Can Happen With Alternate Tunings
I’ve been producing a project where the guitar player has been using a lot of alternate tunings in order to get the overdubbed layers to sound different, so I thought it was time revisit the subject again in a post. Sometimes changing the tuning of a guitar from standard to some alternate tuning can create […]
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