There are some songs that get ingrained in rock n’ roll memory and become classics, and The Clash’s “London Calling” certainly fits that bill. It’s always a great treat to hear inside a song as there’s usually much more happening than we’re aware of in the full mix, and this song is no exception. Have a […]
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For 82 years Gibson made guitars a mandolins at the factory on 225 Parson’s Street in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In 1984 the company moved all of its manufacturing to Nashville, but the skilled workers there still continued to make guitars just as they always had, only now under the name Heritage Guitars. Now the old factory is […]
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Many delay plugins today are either trying to directly emulate tape delay or have a tape delay setting. Setting up a tape delay used to be one of the first things you learned how to do when you started in the studio back in the day, since there was no other way to accomplish the […]
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iZotope’s Neutron is one of the new generation of DAW plugins that analyze the program audio and then make some pretty good suggestions as to the EQ and compression that will work for the track. Many engineers find this somewhat disconcerting, and are maybe a little intimidated by it, while others embrace it as just […]
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Most people (even many audio engineers) don’t realize that the sound effects that they hear in a movie aren’t real. They’re recreated to sound more dramatic or “more real” than they actually sound. That’s the job of the Foley artist, and there aren’t many of them, even in Hollywood. The process is named after Jack […]
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One of the problems with audio interfaces is they just don’t have enough I/O sometimes. Most interfaces are either 8 or 16 channels, which is plenty in some cases and not enough in others. While the price for a single 16 channel interface might seem reasonable, when you put two of them together to meet your […]
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Most musicians and producers hold Motown in a certain reverence, and well they should, since the music has influenced a few generations of artists, players, arrangers and producers. One of the icons of the Motown studio band is bassist James Jamerson, and it’s always fun to listen to anything that shows his genius. Here’s the […]
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Knowing the proper etiquette while recording is almost as important as doing your gig. If you make people uncomfortable or do something that’s considered out of place, chances are that you won’t be asked back. Let’s look at the way everyone expects you to act during the session with these 14 tips taken from The Studio Musician’s […]
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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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