You may have been here before. You’re working on a song but it just isn’t coming together. If you’re experienced you probably know exactly where to start, but even after a couple of steps you might hit a dead end. This excerpt from my Music Producer’s Handbook provides 10 questions to ask in order to troubleshoot a […]
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On this week’s podcast episode, I speak with Keith Jopling about what separates artists who last from those who burn out chasing the wrong metrics. Keith spent 25 years inside the business, including time at Spotify, before interviewing 80 artists and bands to write Riding the Rollercoaster. The creative director model he extracted from that […]
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Riding a fader by hand is one of those skills that separates an experienced mixer from someone just starting out, but even the best of us get tired of doing it on every vocal pass or dialogue track. Compressors can smooth things out, but they often change the character of the performance along with the […]
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I don’t know about you, but I get frustrated whenever I hear a young artist, producer or engineer say something like, “I imported all the stems then started to mix” and you see a picture of 40+ tracks, but no stems. I don’t know where it started, but many people today think that the terms […]
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On this week’s podcast episode, I speak with Dr. Bill Evans, audio scientist, producer, educator, and inventor of the Performance Restoration methodology. Bill believes that drum recording has always involved a painful tradeoff, but it doesn’t have to. Most engineers accept mic bleed as an unavoidable character of a drum sound, questioning whether removing it […]
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There’s a technique that experienced recording engineers have relied on for years, pairing a ribbon microphone with a large-diaphragm condenser on the same source. The ribbon softens the top end and adds warmth, while the condenser delivers clarity and presence. The problem has always been the setup. You need two stands, two preamps, careful positioning, […]
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Female artists who hire producers risk losing creative control before a single song is released. On this week’s podcast episode, Xylo Aria, founder of Music Production for Women (MPW), tells us how she learned this the hard way, by paying for sessions where male producers overrode her vision, leaving her with music she never put […]
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I’m an old Hammond organ player from way back, starting with L-100’s and M-3s, then working myself up to a B-3. Along the way I owned a variety of Leslie rotating speakers, including models 45, 145, 147, and 122. The point is that I have lots of hands-on experience with rotating speakers, which means I’m […]
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One of the biggest problems with large sessions that have lots of mix elements is that there are usually at least a few tracks that can’t be heard distinctly in the mix. Much of this has to do with the fact that one track may be masking another one, caused by frequency clashes between the […]
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On this week’s podcast episode, Elliot Easton, guitarist for The Cars and Creedence Clearwater Revisited, takes us through his journey with the band and beyond. Elliot looks back at The Cars’ origins, from getting a label deal the old fashioned way, to connecting with famed producer Roy Thomas Baker, to recording the band’s initial albums, […]
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If you’ve ever wished you could replace your pitch corrector, harmony generator, doubler, and vocal modulation tools with a single plugin, Klevgrand may have just answered that wish. The Swedish developer known for creative, well-crafted audio tools has released Altitude, a real-time vocal performance station built for singers, producers, and live performers alike. It’s a […]
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There is so much controversy and pushback on AI-generated music that there’s no point revisiting that argument again. But would things be any different if generative artificial intelligence was combined with quantum computing? Could a state-of-the-art quantum computer actually improve the music creation process? I’ll let you be the judge when you watch and listen to […]
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Is the music industry heading into another major reset? On this week’s solo podcast episode, I break down the biggest shifts happening across the music business and music production. In This Episode: And much more. You can hear it at bobbyoinnercircle.com, or via Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Mixcloud, Spotify, Deezer, TuneIn Radio, or RadioPublic. Also, […]
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One of the ongoing challenges in any mix is keeping problematic frequencies under control without making the processing obvious. Static EQ gets you partway there, but if a frequency only causes trouble when the signal gets loud, you end up either over-correcting when it is not needed or under-correcting when it is. That is where […]
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What matters more in the music business, mastering every plugin, or becoming the kind of person people want to hire again? On this week’s podcast episode, I talk with songwriter, producer, engineer, and educator Gary Gray about music licensing, post production, rhythmic integrity, AI, immersive audio, and the character traits that keep people working in […]
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