A Look At The Amazing Feat Of Super Bowl Halftime Show Audio

Whether you like football or not, you have to admit that the Super Bowl has risen almost to the level of a national holiday. While most of us tune in for the game itself, the halftime show is also the music event of the year to many. With an audience of around 100 million, what […]

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MIDI 2.0 Is Almost Here

MIDI changed music creation in so many ways when it was introduced, but you hear less about it these days thanks to virtual instruments and so much music making in the box. That said, it’s still a very important tool, especially if you want your DAW to talk to outside instruments. Even though MIDI might […]

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New Music Gear Monday: Maag Audio Magnum-K Dual Compressor Plugin

The cynical engineer looks at compression these days and says, “It’s all already been done. The world doesn’t need another classic compression emulation.” While the second part of that statement may well be true, the fact of the matter is that there are still new ideas in compressors being released and one of the them […]

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Room Mics And Phase Tricks With Vance Powell

There are two parts to recording that many engineers are either super concerned with or completely oblivious to and that’s placement of the room mics when tracking and phase. In my experience, phase is something that you have to be aware of, but sometimes spending gobs of time on trying to get things just right […]

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The Ultimate Stradivarius Library Is Now Being Recorded, And A City Remains Quiet

There’s a lot of controversy over the sound of what many think is the ultimate stringed instrument – the Stradivarius. To some, it can never sound any better, while others feel that much hype surrounds the name and that a new instrument achieves the same results in a blind A/B test. Whatever the case, the […]

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Producing Wall-Of-Sound Vocals

Mixers are frequently presented with 2 dilemmas when it comes to background vocals – make just a few tracks sound like a lot more, and how to deal with a huge number of tracks. In this video, musician/producer Devin Townsend explains how he turns a few of his vocals into a massive wall of sound, […]

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Yes, You Can Turn Weather Data Into Music

It seems like if we have a data set on just about anything, we can turn it into music. Weather is a little different though in that it’s very organic and changes frequently, sometimes to the extreme, making for an interesting output. Hydrodynamics scientist Graeme Smart for New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric […]

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Get That Gig With These 6 Audition Tips

It’s the dream of many musicians to get a gig with the touring band of a major artist, but getting the audition is a lot easier than getting the gig. Here’s an excerpt from my Touring Musician’s Handbook that provides some great audition tips from some of the top touring musicians. “Depending on how you look at […]

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Music Will Be Taken Over By Drones, Not Robots

I’ve posted here a lot in the past about music made by various robots. Some of it was pretty good, some of it was marginal, but all of it was amazing in terms of the programming required. Same goes for artificial intelligence – there are some results that are totally acceptable in certain situations and […]

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Top Session Guitarist Tim Pierce On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast today is Tim Pierce, who’s one of the most widely used and respected session guitar players in Los Angeles today. Tim has a client list a mile long that includes superstars like Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Rod Stewart, Don Henley, Faith Hill, Dave Mathews Band, Mylie Cyrus, and many more. Simply put, he’s the […]

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Sony Announces A New Immersive Audio Format

One of the big announcements at CES so far is the introduction of Sony’s new immersive audio format called 360 Reality Audio. As in past efforts to launch a new format, numerous companies have signed on such as Warner Music Group, Sony Music, Deezer, nugs.net, Qobuz, and TIDAL, and LiveNation, among others. The technical details […]

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The 10 Traits Of A Great Assistant Engineer

You may never work in a studio that has an assistant engineer, and if you own your own gear, you may never be one yourself, but it’s good to find out what an assistant in a major facility such as the Record Plant, Capitol, or United Recording really needs to know. Some of these tips come […]

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In Session With Al Schmitt

The work of Al Schmitt is and always has been the gold standard for recording engineers. Capturing the natural sounds going down in the studio isn’t always easy, but Al is the master and makes it look a lot easier than it looks. Here’s a great video which shows Al prepping a big band session. […]

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Do You Hear Yanny Or Laural?

You probably looked at the title of this post and thought I lost my mind so early in the new year, but actually there’s a very interesting acoustic phenomena that’s been going around where some people hear the word “Yanny” while others hear “Laural. Let’s give it a try. If you heard “Yanny” like I […]

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The Different Types Of Compressors And When To Use Them

There are a number of different types of compressors that every engineer is familiar with, but there’s not a lot of information available about the differences between them and what they’re good at. Most compressor plugins today are based on the four different electronic building blocks that could be used to build a compressor back […]

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