Category Archives for "Book Excerpt"
- in Book Excerpt by Bobby Owsinski
3 Approaches To Using Your Amplifier’s Tone Controls
As a general rule, most musicians (especially guitar players) have no idea how to use anything that adjusts the frequency bands of their instrument, meaning an amplifier’s tone controls. The reason is that they’re never taught what tone controls are there for, and there’s not a lot of information in the manuals that comes with […]
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The Music Mixing Workbook Is Now Available
If you’re new to mixing and aren’t sure what to do, or your mixes aren’t anywhere near where you’d like them to be, then The Music Mixing Workbook is exactly what you need. It features hands-on exercises that teach you all the things that make a mix sound great, as well as all the things […]
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2 Words That Will Help You Finish Your Self-Produced Project
Every musician today has a their own home studio. While that makes recording yourself easier than ever before, most find that it’s a lot easier to start a self-produced project than finish one. Here’s an excerpt from the 2nd edition of my Music Producer’s Handbook that provides a way to finish those self-produced projects by remembering 2 simple words. […]
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Farewell Bruce Swedien, The Godfather Of Recording
Bruce Swedien was rightfully known as the “Godfather of Recording” because not only did he see it all from almost the beginning, he changed and adapted with the times and technology, breaking ground for the rest of us to follow. From engineering Count Basie and Duke Ellington at Universal Studios in Chicago in the 1950s, […]
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You Can’t Fake Quality
Russ Hughes has had a successful career in multiple areas of the music business, but started a small blog dedicated to helping Pro Tools users that has grown into a group of sites (Pro-Tools-Expert.com, Logic-pro-expert.com, Ableton-Live-Expert.com and Studio-One-Expert.com) that may be the most influential in the digital audio world today. Here’s an excerpt from my […]
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It’s More About Feel Than Perfection
For many producers and artists, it’s difficult to balance feel versus perfection in performances. This story from my good friend engineer Dennis Moody (an excerpt from my Music Business Advice handbook) illustrates why one is sometimes preferred over the other. By the way, Dennis has become the “drummer’s engineer,” with all-star drummers Dave Weckl, Steve […]
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Get A Better Product With The Album Mastering Checklist
Putting together a collection of songs into an album requires additional data beyond what’s needed for an individual song. This applies to any format that the album will be released in, but especially for CDs and vinyl. Follow this album mastering checklist so you don’t miss anything. ◻︎What are the official titles of the album […]
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Keep Your Mix Elements From Clashing With This Checklist
One of the biggest problems with large sessions that have lots of 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 bands that are clashing. […]
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Get Better Mixes Using The Ultimate Mix Checklist
A modern mix can be sophisticated and complicated, so it’s very easy to overlook something in the heat of the moment that can be important to the integrity of the mix and that can help take it to the next level. The Ultimate Mix Checklist provides a number or questions to ask yourself as your […]
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The Many Ways To Build A Mix
Despite what you might think, there is no standard mix element to start and build a mix from. Modern mixers employ various techniques and they’re all valid, especially in different genres of music. For instance, here are the places from which a mix can be started: From the Bass From a loop From the Kick […]
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Using The Environment To Fine Tune Your Studio Ears
One of the biggest attributes for an engineer or producer to develop is what’s known as “studio ears.” That’s the ability to discern between minute changes within the music that you’re hearing. Is that guitar slightly out of tune? What frequency is the vocal harshness coming from? Is the keyboard part coming in slightly early […]
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Producer/Engineer Mack On Getting Great Guitar Sounds
With a who’s who list of credits such as Queen, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, The Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, Electric Light Orchestra, Rory Gallagher, Sparks, Giorgio Moroder, Donna Summer, Billy Squire, and Extreme, the producer/engineer who goes simply by the name Mack has made his living making superstars sound great. Having recorded so many big […]
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The Producer/Engineer/Musician Checklist For Getting Paid
Your not a music professional if you haven’t been screwed out of money at least once. That’s par for the course and part of the learning process, but it obviously becomes a real problem if it continues to happen. Regardless of what end of the music business you work in, as an independent contractor it’s your […]
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5 Things To Keep In Mind When Miking An Audience
I’ve received questions about miking an audience a few times in the past week so it seems like a good time to repost this how-to from a few years ago. It goes without saying that if you’re recording a live performance, then you want to pick up some of the crowd reaction to make it […]
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The “Can’t Seem To Get This Sound To Work” Tracking Checklist
Did you ever try to record something that just didn’t sound quite right no matter what you did? It’s a lot more common situation than you might think. While it’s easy to just try a bunch of random things, sometimes that makes you more confused than ever. That’s when it’s time to break out this […]
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