Category Archives for "Production"
People, and governments, get upset at the strangest things. With AI music and deep fakes raging, Chechnya has taken silliness to a new level by placing limits on musical tempo. Yes, there really will be a tempo police making sure that songs are at just the right speed for the country. From now on, “all […]
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Ever since the music business shifted to home studios as the primary place for music creation, musicians, artists and producers have lamented the fact that you infrequently had collaborators in the room together. This fact was especially hammered home during the pandemic, when people didn’t want to be in the same room even if they […]
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This post is about how to be a professional, but it could just as easily been about how to be a diplomat, be a compromiser, or even be a nice guy. What it’s really all about is how to be in a band or a session with other people who might or might not want […]
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Modulation effects can be so useful when it comes to adding interest and motion to a mix. While sometimes just one can make a huge difference to the sound, sometimes stacking them can take the interest level up several notches. One of the problems with modulation plugin stacking, like with all plugins, is that it […]
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If you look back to recording studios from the 1960s through the early 1980s, the centerpiece of the control room was generally a console with a brand like Neve, Trident, API, MCI or a variety of offshoots. Mixing was fairly easy in the days of 8 and even 16 track, but once it went to […]
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Either you love or hate using a DAW controller, but if you’re in the category that uses one, then you usually want it to control as many of the parameters as possible. That’s even more important if you normally use channel strip plugins, as more control means more of a real console feel. If you’re […]
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Although you may be great at recording drums and have a great sounding studio with an excellent signal chain, the two chief variables in the recording are the drummer and his drums. No amount of technique or gear can overcome a bad sounding kit or a drummer that hits inconsistently, hence the importance of sound […]
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I know what you were thinking when you read the title. “I have plenty of EQ plugins already. Why do I need another one?” I think all of us feel the same way, but if a plugin does something faster (especially) or better than what you have already, then it’s worth checking out. And that’s […]
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By now just about everyone has heard about The Sphere in Las Vegas, the next level event venue that takes both the audio and visuals to a completely new level. The reviews so far have been fantastic, and it seems like a great reason to make a pilgrimage to Las Vegas just for the experience. […]
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It doesn’t seem all that long ago when engineers began to get access to relatively inexpensive mastering limiters that emulated the gear that only mastering engineers had previously. That led to a wave of way-too-loud mixes that we’re only now beginning to recover from. That said, there’s a whole new category of mastering plugins that […]
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With so much music being created with loops and samples, it almost seems like having a group of real musicians play together is becoming a lost art. Because going the electronic route is so easy, many producers or potential bands give up when things don’t sound right, and they don’t know why. The fact of […]
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We all love compressors and can’t get enough, even if we already have a similar model. For instance, how many dbx 160-style compressors do you need? Well, one more wouldn’t hurt, especially if it has modern features, and more importantly, is free. That’s what you’ll get with Softube’s VCA Compressor, which is amazingly available at […]
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Equalization is one of the most difficult parts of recording to get the hang of since there’s literally almost an infinite number of possibilities. Most of us learn by experience and usually massive amounts of trial and error before our ears become trained to recognize EQ problems when we hear them, but there are some very […]
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A big part of EQing, and maybe the first thing you’ll be concerned with when embarking on the process, is finding any resonances in the recorded audio and then decreasing them. This used to be a manual endeavor which amounted to boosting a band of a parametric EQ and then sweeping the frequencies until the […]
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One of the cool things about artificial reverb plugins is that they give you a sense of size and space, and that’s certainly sufficient for most modern mixing tasks. There’s nothing like being in a real space though, and some of the most compelling are large caves. I’ve been to quite a few good ones, […]
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