Category Archives for "Production"
- in Production by Bobby Owsinski
A Look Deep Inside Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody
Queen’s epic “Bohemian Rhapsody” has remained a creative marvel every since its release in October 1975. It provides a special insight into the genius of songwriter, lead singer and pianist Freddie Mercury and to the band as this anti-radio mini-opera actually not only managed to go top 10 in most of the world, but still remains […]
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Farewell And Thanks Geoff Emerick
If you’re in the music business or know any of its history you probably know the name Geoff Emerick. Geoff made a name for himself as one of the original 5 Beatles engineers, then went on to a fruitful, yet often overlooked career afterwards, recording Paul McCartney and Wings, Elvis Costello, Cheap Trick, America, Ultravox […]
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Make Your Session Run More Efficiently With This Overdub Checklist
An overdub session, especially one involving multiple players and parts, can deteriorate quickly into chaos without a plan. It’s easy to spend hours looking for the right performance or sound, but you can spend even more time experimenting if the producer didn’t expect that to happen and allot time for it. That’s why it pays to […]
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Producer/Engineer Joe Barresi On Mixing Distorted Guitars
When it comes to hard rock guitar recording and mixing, producer/engineer Joe Barresi is considered the king. He’s worked with Soundgarden, Tool, Queens Of The Stone Age, Slipknot, among many others, and his work is widely admired by both artists and other top-of-the-line engineers. In this video he shows how he treats distorted rhythm and […]
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Your Studio Lifestyle May Be Killing You – Here’s How To Stop It From Happening Fast
It’s probably fair to say that the studio lifestyle isn’t exactly healthy. We start in the business working long hours, then feel that we’re not working hard enough later in our career if we’re still not working like a maniac. That can lead to all sorts of health problems, as there’s so little time left […]
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Ken Scott’s Inside Look At Recording The Beatles White Album
The post last week from the Ken Scott bio Abbey Road To Ziggy Stardust was so popular that I thought I’d do it again. Since we’re now celebrating the 50th anniversary of the release of The Beatles White Album, here’s an excerpt from the book describing those sessions. I must admit that I enjoyed reading […]
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The History Of Electric Guitar Distortion
Ah, guitar distortion. It seems like we can’t get enough of it. From the very first time it appeared on records in the 50s, we’ve been hooked. I’ve posed a little about the history of guitar distortion in the past, but the video below takes the history back even further to Bob Willis and his […]
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Producer Mark Ronson On How Sampling Changed Music
I never had an opinion about mega-producer Mark Ronson either way. Sure, I’d admired his work with Adele, Amy Winehouse and Bruno Mars (just to name a few), but I had never seen him speak much until this TED talk below about how sampling changed music. I must admit that he opened my eyes to […]
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Producer Ken Scott On Working With Early David Bowie
Recently I went back and began to read some of the Ken Scott biography Abbey Road To Ziggy Stardust that I was lucky enough to co-write. It’s a great book (if I do say so myself) with some wonderful stories about Ken working with some of the legends of music business. One of my favorites […]
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Here’s How Michael Jackson Constructed His First Solo Hit
When Michael Jackson left his brothers and went solo, it didn’t take long for him to establish himself as a solo hitmaker. His first release “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” was an instant worldwide hit and continues to be popular almost 40 years later. Most listeners just take a song for granted but not […]
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Want Your Band To Play Tight? Concentrate On These 10 Things
A lot of bands are naturally good because of the caliber of the musicians. Their innate talent causes them to automatically do some things that are important to band tightness, but many of the rest of us sometimes wonder why our band doesn’t seem as tight as it should be, either across all songs or […]
Continue reading- in Acoustics , Production by Bobby Owsinski
440Hz Vs. 432Hz Tuning Standard Comparison – Again
Every few years musical conspiracy theorists push forth a new iteration of how our A = 440Hz tuning standard was actually meant to be 432Hz instead. I’ve written about this in the past, but every so often a new video comparison shows up that makes it worth at least looking at and listening to. Just […]
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Eric Clapton “Layla” Isolated Guitar And Vocal Tracks
We haven’t done an isolated track for a long time, but I thought that this one would be good to get us back in the swing of things. It’s the isolated lead vocal and lead guitar tracks from Derek And The Domino’s (Eric Clapton) classic hit “Layla.” On it you’ll hear snippets of the 6 […]
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How To Avoid “Big Mono” During Recording
We all love big wide stereo soundfields, especially the ones that come from the stereo output of an electronic keyboard. If you pan too many elements hard left and hard right however, you end up with “Big Mono,” which is a term that my friend Ed Seay likes to use. That means that you actually […]
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Is Today’s Pop Music That Bad? This Video Thinks So
We hear it all the time. “Why is music so bad today?” I’m not so sure it is actually. If you’re past 30, your musical tastes are pretty much set in stone, so it gets more difficult to accept new music with each passing year. That doesn’t mean what’s new is better or worse than […]
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