Category Archives for "Production"
We’ve all been there. You’re either on stage or in the studio with a drummer that has no idea that his or her cymbals are way louder than the rest of the kit. Everything’s fine until you come to a tom fill or chorus when either the crash (the usual culprit) or the ride cymbal […]
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The digital world that we live in presents a big problem for artists, labels, producers, engineers, and session players, and that’s getting paid and receiving credit for the work they’ve created. Even though a song is being streamed from the likes of Spotify, Apple Music or any of the other dozens of streaming platforms doesn’t […]
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One of the things I’ve found over the years is that it’s easy to interpret the demands of a client during a mix if you understand what they’re trying to get across. It’s amazing how just a single word can describe a frequency condition if we know what to listen for. That said, it’s sometimes […]
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Guitarist Hank Marvin has been a huge influence on top British guitar players like Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler and Jeff Beck, who in turn became huge influencers on generations of guitar players that followed them. While Hank is a great player, one of the things that separates him from everyone else is the unique ambience […]
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The essence of mixing is the balance between instruments or mix elements. No matter how good you are at other aspects of the mixing process, if you don’t get the balance right, you don’t have a mix. Here are some questions to ask yourself as well as 6 exercises taken from my Audio Mixing Bootcamp book that […]
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I often get asked what plugins I regularly use, so a few years ago I decided to share my plugin thoughts with a personal Top 10 list. Here’s my edition for 2018, which isn’t all that different from last year except that it has fewer compressors, since I’ve found myself using less and less compression […]
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We’ve all had those situations where we’ve had to record a noisy electric guitar or keyboard, or just found the background noise on a track too much to handle. Sure, sometimes the noise gets covered in the mix, but it’s also cumulative, so 4 or 5 noisy tracks can really muddy up a mix. There […]
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For the longest time musicians, artists, engineers and producers were used to slaving over songs for long periods of time in the studio. Creation took time, and it went from the more or less 3 hour sessions of the 50s and 60s to the months and even years of the 1990s and 2000s. Thankfully, the […]
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One of the most overlooked or taken for granted elements in mixing is panorama, or the act of placing a sound element in the soundfield. To understand panorama we must first understand that the stereo sound system (which is two separate audio channels, each with its own speaker) represents sound spatially. Panning lets us select […]
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One of the hardest things to record can be a vocalist who is not comfortable with the studio conditions. Even a seasoned pro sometimes can’t do his or her best unless the conditions are just right. Consider some of these suggestions culled from the 4th edition of my Recording Engineer’s Handbook before and during a […]
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Best known for his work the hard rock bands Dio, Dokken, Foreigner, Bad Company and Great White, engineer Wyn Davis style in that genre is as unmistakable as it is masterful. From his Total Access Recording studio in Redondo Beach, California, Wyn’s work typifies old-school engineering coupled with the best of modern techniques. Here’s an excerpt […]
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I’m really pleased to announce that Sonarworks has selected my 101 Mixing Tricks course in its 2018 A-Z Mixing Tutorial Guru Guide. Thanks to Lee Chapman and everyone at the company for the recognition! If you don’t know about the 101 Mixing Tricks course, it’s techniques that I’ve garnered from some of the greatest mixers on […]
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Having your preferred DAW in your studio is never a problem time-wise because we usually have enough time to use it. Song to song setup takes a few minutes, but usually isn’t a problem even in the most time-compressed situations. Setup for recording a live gig is a lot more intense though, since time is […]
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“Chasing The Demo” is something that every producer goes through. In other words, an artist or songwriter hands you a demo of a song that’s so good already, but you think you can do it better. Sometimes it happens, but usually something about it is just not as good, mostly because of a limitation on […]
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For many up-and-coming artists, just getting to record in a real high-end commercial studio is a dream come true, but once you’re successful, that might not be enough. Many artists thrive on isolation away from record labels, management and the public, so an out of the way residential studio is the perfect place for creating. […]
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