New Music Gear Monday: KickBlock Bass Drum Stabilizer

Okay, how many times has this happened to you? You place the mics on the kick drum, then the sound starts changing as you’re listening to the drummer player. You wonder why until you walk into the control room and see that every time the drummer hits the kick it moves. You don’t want to […]

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Music Disappearing From Radio, Hydrating Your Voice, And Hollywood Bowl FOH Mixer Fred Vogler

My guest on the podcast this week is 6 time Grammy Award-winner Fred Vogler who’s the principal sound designer and FOH mixer for the Hollywood Bowl and Walt Disney Concert Hall. Throughout the year, he also records the Los Angeles Philharmonic, LA Opera, Los Angeles Master Chorale, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for commercial and broadcast release. Fred […]

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The Intangibles Of A Mix

It’s easy to think that getting a good mix is just a matter of pushing up some faders, getting a reasonable balance, adding some effects, and you’re finished. Although that might work for a rough mix, there are still a number of intangibles that are vitally important to a great mix. Awareness is always the […]

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The First Real Drum Machine Is Not What You Think – It’s The Rhythmate

When we think of the first drum machines we automatically think of the Rhythm Ace or LinnDrum or even the MPC, but there are a couple that actually predate even those machines. Harry Chamberlin’s all tube Rhythmate was actually the prototype for all that came after, but unfortunately it’s been most overlooked and forgotten. It […]

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New Music Gear Monday: Mooer Audio Tone Capture Pedal

One of the things that a producer often faces is the need for different guitar sounds in a track, but a guitar player who either only has one instrument, or refuses to play another instrument. Or maybe you’re getting a great thick humbucker sound but need to offset it with a jangly single coil part […]

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Amazon Sells Counterfeit CDs, Mixing With Your Eyes, And Amuse CEO Diego Farias On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Diego Farias, who’s a digital music and tech expert with experience from some of the world’s most successful tech companies. He now serves as the CEO and co-founder of record label and music distributor Amuse.  Amuse has a unique business model in that it provides free distribution to all the […]

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The 10 Traits Of A Music Professional

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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A Look At Falsetto Hits Through The Years

Turn on the radio, access a playlist, or just listen to the background music of life and I bet within 10 minutes you’re going to hear a song with a male falsetto voice. The more you pay attention, the more songs and singers that you find are using it. Falsetto comes from the Italian word […]

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New Music Gear Monday: New Fangled Audio Punctuate Saturation Plugin

Sometimes a product has just one feature that everyone latches onto as most desired, which then becomes a product in its own right. That’s what’s happened with New Fangled Audio’s Punctuate plugin, which started its life as a feature on the company’s Elevate Mastering Limiter. Punctuate is a multi-band transient modulator based on the critical […]

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Producer Joe Solo, Re-recording Old Songs, And The 64 Bit World On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Joe Solo, who turned a chance meeting with Macy Gray into a 17 year journey that culminated in a Grammy win, a double platinum album, and a hit MTV video.  Soon afterward Joe transitioned into the world of music publishing as the head staff writer/producer for Paramount’s Famous Music Publishing […]

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Yes, There Is A Guitar String Recycling Program

If you’re interested in helping progress towards a healthy environment and you work in the music business, you’ll be happy to know that there’s actually a recycling program for guitar strings. Established by D’Addario and now joined by Martin Guitars, the Playback program has already recycled over 3.9 million strings. Playback string recycling is now […]

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Ken Scott On Working With Elton John On Honky Chateau

I thought it was time for another peek at what it was like working back in the glory days of the 1970s. Here’s an excerpt from producer/engineer Ken Scott’s great From Abbey Road To Ziggy Stardust book that I was lucky enough to co-write. He talks about working with Elton John on his highly acclaimed […]

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It Turns Out That Stonehenge Had Excellent Acoustics

There’s been all sorts of scholarly theories about the purpose of Stonehenge over the years, but it turns out that the one characteristic rarely looked at is its acoustics. A research team from the University of Salford in England reproduced the historic site in 1/12th size and placed it inside an anechoic chamber to discover […]

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New Music Gear Monday: UK Sound 1173 Mic Pre Compressor

For about 50 years now, the Neve 1073 pre amp and the UREI 1176 compressor/limiter have been an unbeatable combination. This versatile signal path has been used time and again on countless records and has almost always worked for recording a variety of sources. It’s getting more difficult to find the original hardware devices without […]

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411 Music Group’s Kristen Agee, Katy Perry “Dark Horse” Verdict, And Musician’s SoundCloud Accounts On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Kristen Agee, who is a classically trained violinist and started playing multiple instruments at the age of 7. She opened a studio in Silver Lake, California where she recorded punk bands and wrote music for various artists, all while touring as bassist after learning the instrument from Rolling Stone’s bass […]

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