I heard the Katy Perry hit “Firework” sitting in a chiropractors waiting room the other day and marveled at how well the song is constructed and produced. Then it hit me that I had done a production analysis on the song in one of my Deconstructed Hits books, so I thought it might be a good time […]
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In the “Why didn’t anyone think of that sooner?” category comes the news that 10 famous Nashville Music Row studios are teaming up to offer tours. After years of getting requests from tourists to see behind the scenes of what goes on in the studios on Music Row, it seems that the idea has finally taken […]
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There are a number of recording accessories that prove to come in handy almost every day you’re in the studio. In fact, a session can absolutely ground to a halt without a few of them. Here are some suggestions for some accessories that you’ll be so happy you have when the need arises. Console tape – […]
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Video games have huge budgets these days and much of that is dedicated to audio. This week on Episode #122 of my Inner Circle Podcast we’ll talk to Alex Benyon, who’s worked in a variety of audio jobs on huge game titles like Guitar Hero Live, DJ Hero and Call of Duty. In the intro […]
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Ordinary items in our everyday lives can be used as instruments, and perhaps the best example of that statement is this video from The Bottle Boys. The German group has turned playing songs on beer bottles into a career as they’ve traveled all over the world to give concerts over the last 10 years. Here […]
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Vocal tuning can be a touchy subject. Many think that it’s putting a big band-aid on a problem while others feel that it’s just a normal by-product of today’s music production. But tuning a vocal in the studio is something completely different from doing it live on stage, where many see that as cheating of the highest order. […]
Continue readingWhile the Beach Boys were always a unique and ground-breaking band during their peak years, the group can be quite ragged live lately. I hate to say it, but sometimes you get the feeling that it’s mailing it in. That said, this video shows that from a performance angle, the band’s still got it. It’s a […]
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Here’s a study that every gigging musician should know about. It appears that music can profoundly influence how we taste things, but most significantly, it’s beer it holds the most influence over. A study published in Frontiers in Psychology by Dr. Felipe Reinoso Cavalho from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and KU Leuven, in collaboration with the Brussels […]
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If you’re working with an artist or band, a critical time in the entire recording process is before you actually record, which is known as preproduction. Many producers think of preproduction as working out parts with the artist or band in a rehearsal room, but there’s actually another part of preproduction that can be even more crucial […]
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Not many people know what a dialog editor on a major network television show does, but this weeks’ guest tells us all about it. Don Murrey has spent the last 20 years cutting dialog for a host of network shows and currently works on The Flash on the CW. On the podcast, he describe exactly what […]
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Here’s a priceless film from 1937 that shows Duke Ellington in the studio recording, and the process of making a vinyl record release afterwards. There’s a lot to notice in the video that will make you appreciate the recording process from back then. First of all, notice that the band is recorded on a single microphone. […]
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Remember a few years back when “modeling” the sound of a vintage piece of audio equipment was looked on with suspicion? Well, those days are over as we now have successful plugin models of just about any piece of popular gear that even the hardened pros are impressed with. One of the last avenues for modeling […]
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One of the most iconic guitar songs from the 70s is Dire Straits “Sultans of Swing,” which features Mark Knopfler’s soaring clean Strat solos and fills. At one time or another, most guitar players have tried to cop some of the licks from this song, only to discover that you can’t really get the same […]
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If you ever wondered if a word was “Metal enough” for a song lyric, there’s a study that evaluated the lyrics from 222,623 metal songs that can tell you. The data set included songs from 7,364 bands spread over 22,314 albums. The research was amazingly comprehensive, but it was done privately by a single data scientist for […]
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Your not a music professional if you haven’t been screwed out of money at least once. That’s par for the course and part of the learning process, but it obviously becomes a real problem if it continues to happen. Regardless of what end of the music business you work in, as an independent contractor it’s your […]
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