Look-ahead limiters remade the music business when they are first introduced in the late 90s. In some cases, that wasn’t a good thing, since engineers now had the ability to make their mixes louder than ever, and that’s exactly what they did. That said, when a look-ahead-style limiter is used gently, it can allow the […]
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Where you place the instrument or vocalist in the room can make a big difference in how that instrument ultimately sounds. That said, when you’re recording a group of players at the same time (especially a group that has a loud rhythm section), finding the best-sounding place in the room for each instrument is sometimes […]
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Powered by RedCircle I read a lot of music biographies and history books, especially from the Rock era. Like most people, I love reading about the story behind the hits. The best book I’ve ever read about that era is Buzz Me In: Inside The Record Plant Studios. The Record Plant was co-founded by engineer Gary […]
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Unless you’ve actually used magnetic tape for recording, you probably can’t appreciate what a factor tape noise played in the recording process. Gain staging was critical in order to keep the noise at bay, but that was soon supported by the introduction of Dolby noise reduction in 1965, which lowered magnetic tape noise by 10 […]
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In this week’s podcast episode, my guest guest today is Josh Simons, CEO of Australia’s only ASX-listed music company, Vinyl Group. Josh’s journey is as diverse as it gets. He founded Vampr, the ‘LinkedIn for creatives,’ connecting over 1.4 million music professionals worldwide. He’s also been instrumental in developing platforms like Jaxsta and Vinyl.com, tackling […]
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Over the years many mixers often went to the long out-of-production dbx 118 dynamic range expander to add a little more snap to their drum tracks using its expansion mode. While we’re all used to using compression, expansion a process frequently ignored, but is equally as useful once you get the hang of it. The […]
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Depending upon how much of a purist you are, pitch correction is either the worst thing to ever happen or a godsend. Regardless of how you come down on the issue, it’s at the very least a necessary evil in today’s music. Here are 5 tips from the 5th edition of my Mixing Engineer’s Handbook that […]
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In this week’s podcast episode, my guest is music marketing strategist, speaker, author, and the founder of Cyber PR, Ariel Hyatt. Known for her bold ideas and practical strategies, Ariel has helped thousands of independent musicians and creative entrepreneurs craft sustainable careers over the course of two decades. Ariel has always been at the forefront […]
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The other day I played some isolated tracks from The Beatles “Something” that featured the unique Abbey Road RS124 compressor, a modification of Altec’s 436C vari-mu compressor. There were only 25 of these hand-built units ever made so it’s rare to find one. However, Heritage Audio has brought a version of the unit back with […]
Continue readingI haven’t posted an isolated track in a good long while so it’s time to bring one back. This time it’s all the isolated tracks from one of The Beatles most beautiful songs “Something,” from their Abbey Road album. In it you’ll hear the isolated drums, bass, guitars, vocals and keyboards/strings (thanks to JP Isolated […]
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Go on, take a guess. What’s the loudest sound in history? Maybe liftoff of the great Saturn V booster helping an Apollo mission to the moon. Or maybe a Deep Purple or Metallica concert. The detonation of a nuclear device? Good guesses, but not even close. According to scientists, the the eruption of Krakatoa, a […]
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In this week’s podcast episode, my guest is Danny Garcia, co-founder and CEO of the music promotion and discovery site Songtools. Songtools makes it easy to promote your music across Facebook, TikTok and Instagram, and reach out to over 150,000 curated Spotify playlists. It also helps playlisters discover new music, and vets both artists and […]
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AI mastering tools get a lot of mediocre reviews, but the fact of the matter is that you need to load in a reference track in order to get the best results. That’s a multi-step process in that you have to download a desired track, then upload it to the tool and have it learn […]
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Let me start by saying that I don’t know how I feel about this. It’s either something that’s so far ahead that it’s tough to grasp it, or it’s a huge heaping piece of crap, but you’ll get a chance to judge for yourself later down the page. What I’m referring to is a newly […]
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In this week’s podcast episode, my guest is Lon Neumann, the president of Neumann Technologies, a company that’s focused on designing and commissioning production facilities for immersive audio. Lon has a long history with Sony, and is especially keen on their 360VME virtual mix environment system, which he discussed at length during the podcast. He […]
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