Microphone Builder Dave Pearlman On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Dave Pearlman, who after years as a touring pedal steel guitarist with everyone from Dan Fogelberg and Phil Everly to Pat Boone and Bobby Womack, opened his Rotund Rascal Studio in North Hollywood in 1979.  To save money on outside techs, Dave began to do repairs and modifications on classic […]

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Here’s Where Your Vocal Tone Comes From

It’s amazing how different each person’s voice can be from another, but also equally amazing how similar two people’s voices can be to each other. When recording a singer, it helps to know how his or her vocal tone is actually being produced in order to capture it more accurately. This great article by Jamie […]

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Studio Etiquette Tips For When The Session Ends

I’ve covered studio etiquette rules here in the past, but they were primarily for when a session was in progress. When the session, or your part in it, is completed, the etiquette doesn’t stop though, as this excerpt from The Studio Musician’s Handbook (written with ace studio bass player Paul ILL) illustrates. It’s perfectly natural […]

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Avid Finances Looking Strong

A lot of people have been pretty down on Avid from time to time (myself included), but the company is still strong, and it’s growing. In its most recent earnings call, Avid announced a first quarter 2019 revenue of $103.3 million which is a second consecutive quarter of 5 percent year-over-year growth. The company also […]

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New Music Gear Monday: Gamechanger Audio Motor Synth

I don’t usually post about musical instruments unless there’s something that I consider groundbreaking or very unusual, and I think that this week’s featured gear piece qualifies for at least one of these (not sure which). It’s something called the Motor Synth, which its manufacturer, Gamechanger Audio, claims is the world’s first electro-mechanical synthesizer. Electro-mechanical, […]

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The Most Musical Cities, Netflix Audio Upgrade, And Music Technologist David Frangioni On The Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is David Frangioni, who started his music career as a drummer, but soon became a pioneer in MIDI technology. This led him into the studio as an engineer and producer for dozens of top artists including The Stones, Ringo Starr, Aerosmith, Elton John, Sting, Carl Palmer, Journey, Styx, KISS, […]

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A Look Inside “Owner Of A Lonely Heart” With Trevor Horn

Trevor Horn is one of the most successful and respected producers ever, and he has a long list of big credits to prove it like Yes, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Seal, and many more. That said, Horn rates “Owner Of A Lonely Heart” from Yes’s 1983 release 90215 as technically his best work. In the […]

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The Theremin Before Sci-Fi

We all know what a theremin sounds like, and we’ve heard it on dozens of sci-fi movie and TV show soundtracks, but not many of us are aware of the history of the instrument. The theremin was actually enjoyed by audiences well before it was used in scary movies. RCA Victor produced the first commercial […]

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New Music Gear Monday: PreSonus StudioLive 64S Digital Mixer And Interface

PreSonus has been making some great digital mixers for a long time now (I have one in a rehearsal studio), and they keep on finding ways to make the StudioLive series better – not just in small steps but in leaps and bounds. The company’s latest StudioLive 64S takes the product series to the next […]

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Grammy Audio Co-Ordinator Michael Abbott On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Michael Abbott, who started in television audio doing front-of-house sound for projects like the Olympics ceremonies and the Academy Awards, to working for the major television networks as a staff mixer on a variety of shows. Michael now heads the sound design, engineering and consulting company All Ears, where he […]

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Steve Albini Shows Us His Junk

Engineer Steve Albini (Nirvana, The Pixies, Bush and tons more credits) is often asked for his opinions on the music business and his honest straight-talk approach can sometimes come off as a little jaded and some say even a tad grumpy. Get him around his Electrical Audio studio talking gear however, and he becomes as […]

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The 2 Arrangement Rules That Every Producer And Mixer Should Know

One of the first things a producer does during preproduction is to dig deep into the songs to check out the arrangements and the song structure. Even if a song is written well and has catchy hooks, the arrangement is what really makes it cook. How you arrange the song is the key to how […]

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How The Blue LED Changed The World

Our world is lit by LED light that’s so ubiquitous that we don’t even notice it anymore. Buy a piece of audio gear and all the indicators are LEDs. Buy a new lamp or light bulb and it’s now composed of LEDs, but did you know that the key to the omnipresent LED lighting comes […]

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New Music Gear Monday: XLN Audio XO Sample Mapping Tool

Anyone with a large sample library knows that ones of the banes of such a big selection is having too many choices. It’s difficult to find exactly what you want quickly, and it gets even harder if you have duplicates or custom sounds with similar names or tags. Enter XLN Audio’s XO sample mapping plugin, […]

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Digital Audio Bad For Environment, String Player – Royal Opera Lawsuit, And Music Registry’s Ritch Esra On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Ritch Esra, who is the former promotion coordinator for A&M Records and director of A&R for Arista Records, where he worked extensively with the publishing and songwriting communities for material for Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Melissa Manchester, Tanya Tucker, Jennifer Warnes and Jermaine Jackson, and various […]

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