I’m very happy to announce that the 4th edition of The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook is now available on Amazon. So what’s different? This updated version is self-published for one thing, but it also contains new sections on Immersive Audio and online mastering, as well as new and updated hit-mixer interviews. If you haven’t seen the […]
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Stevie Blacke is a multi-instrumentalist known around Hollywood as the “strings guy” because he’s often called upon to record full string sections of violin, viola, cello and double-bass (up to 40 tracks!) all by himself. He’s much more than just an orchestral string player though, as he also does sessions on mandolin, dobro, sitar and […]
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In the list of iconic recording studios, Music Shoals Sound Studio is right up there with the most famous. During its heyday of the 70s, the studio hosted a wide array of artists that produced dozens of hit records, including Aretha Franklin, Cher, Boz Scaggs, The Rolling Stones, the Staple Singers, Bob Seger, Traffic, Willie Nelson, Rod Stewart, […]
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One of the byproducts of just using a DAW and not having a console in your home studio is the fact that the monitoring and communication features that we were all so used to are suddenly absent. While monitor controllers are pretty much everywhere now, that still leaves communication with the artist’s cue mix a persistent […]
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There is probably no other group that has as a fanatical a following as Rush. It seems like there’s no in-between with the band – you either love them or hate them, intensely. There’s no denying that Rush has had some huge hits though, and “Tom Sawyer” is one of their biggest. Here’s the isolated […]
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The Fender Stratocaster is the most popular guitar in the world, and because of that, there are a lot of imitations out there. That’s not a problem as we can decided quickly whether we’d rather have the imitation instead of the real deal. The problem comes with the many fake Strats that are available. What do […]
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One of the things that frequently happens when building your own studio in your basement or garage is that you construct it to get as much isolation as possible, then realize that the temperature inside always hovers around tropic-level heat, even while the weather is below zero outside. That’s because the last thing that most […]
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Grammy-winning engineer Tim Latham has worked with a wide variety of artists across many musical genres, including the Black Eyed Peas, Kid Rock, Lou Reed, Erykah Badu, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, The Roots, Britney Spears and many more, and he’s the guest on Episode #142 of my Inner Circle Podcast. Tim has […]
Continue readingWe all have tons of computer cables that we’ve collected over the years, many of which are obsolete, but we keep around anyway. With each new generation of peripherals comes a new cable, and that means our cable box gets bigger. CNET recently posted an article about which cables you should keep and which to […]
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PSP’s impressive plugins always make my Top 10 list and rightfully so. There’s a lot of expertise that goes into making these gems, and each one has a variety of real-world uses. The latest from the company is the FETpressor, based around the sound of the 1970s hardware blackface Universal Audio compressor/limiters that we all loved […]
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This isn’t exactly a traditional New Years song, but it’s a great one. Dan Folgerberg was an exceptional artist and unfortunately passed away about 10 years ago. He did leave us with some wonderful music, and this song, “Same Old Auld Lang Syne,” is one of his best. It’s live and the playing is superb, but […]
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If you ever wanted to record some of those authentic Beatles guitar sounds but didn’t know how to go about getting them, then this is the video for you. It uses only modern gear and relies mostly on pedal combinations. Granted, the amp is a Vox AC30 and the guitars and bass are modern versions […]
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Technology moves ahead, sometimes quickly and sometimes more slowly than we would like. That said, we’re all beholden to it more than ever, and that trend shows no letting up. Because tech is such a big part of our lives, here’s a report card on some of the tech products, companies and issues from 2016. […]
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Episode 141 of my Inner Circle Podcast features my annual year end review as well as a look ahead to what might happen in the music business in 2017. So much went down last year that was eventful, and some of it was completely under the radar, so you’ll want to listen to this episode for […]
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Johann Sebastian Bach is generally considered to be one of the great classical composers, with compositions that exhibit a technical mastery of harmony and counterpoint. One of the things he excelled at was writing short polyphonic hymns known as chorale cantatas (he wrote over 300), which are short 4 voice pieces rich in harmony. As it turns […]
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