Music Contracts Producers Should Know

Many musicians and artists believe that music production is just acting like a director of a movie in order to achieve a great recording, but it’s so much more than that. Music producers have a complex job where they have to be part politician, diplomat, casting director, creative director, financier and product manager. That’s a […]

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Isolated Track: Keith Richards Guitar Solo On “Sympathy For The Devil”

We haven’t done an isolated track for a while but this one popped up and it’s a good one, especially if you’re a Rolling Stones fan. It’s the isolated guitar solo track by Keith Richards on the classic “Sympathy For The Devil.” The song was recorded for the Beggars Banquet album in early June of […]

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5 Tips On How To Address Negative Comments On Your Music

In the highly social online world that we live in, one thing’s for sure – at some point we’re going to receive negative comments on something. It’s bad enough when it’s about something we’ve posted but especially hurtful when it’s about our music. How you address those comments is extremely important if you don’t want […]

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Thunderbolt 4, Former Police Manager Miles Copeland – Part 1, YouTube Ads, And On My Latest Podcast

Get ready for some great behind-the-scenes music business stories as my guest on the podcast this week is Miles Copeland, who formerly managed The Police and created IRS Records. IRS was at the forefront of punk and New Wave as the home of bands like REM, The Bangles, Dead Kennedys, The Go Gos, and many others.  He also […]

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How To Record Drums Like The Beatles In 1963

Every now and then someone asks about getting that vintage sound that bands like The Beatles got way back in the 60’s. There’s no mystery to how that was done in terms of microphones, but the other gear that was used makes all the difference in the end. This video by Boulevard Recording shows you […]

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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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10 Changes That Have Made Mixing In The Box Better Than Ever

Mixing in the box got a bad rap early on because the sound of the mixes was a long way from the analog console mixes that everyone was used to. Today that’s not a problem as everything has improved so much that the most hard-core classic engineers have now embraced mixing in the box, and […]

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New Music Gear Monday: Non-Lethal Applications Snapshot 2

Do you use outboard gear when you mix? If so, you probably have a way to document the gear settings so you can repeat them if a mix revision is needed. But what happens if you can’t find the documentation? Snapshot 2 from Non-Lethal Applications is a way that you can attach your documentation to […]

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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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What The Heck Is A Yardstick Mix And How Do I Use One?

If you’re really happy with your mix but have to send it off to someone else to work on, how do you make sure that the mix comes back the same. Assuming that they’ll be using the same plugins (although you could burn the processing into the mix), the answer is what’s known as a […]

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Legendary Rock Producer Martin Birch Has Passed

If you ever listened to a hard rock album from the 70s and 80s, chances are it was produced by Martin Birch. The producer had long running relationships with Iron Maiden (10 albums), Deep Purple (10 albums), Fleetwood Mac (9 albums), Whitesnake (9 albums), Rainbow (5 albums), and pairs of albums with both Blue Oyster […]

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