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 […]
Continue reading
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 […]
Continue reading
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 […]
Continue reading
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 […]
Continue reading
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. […]
Continue reading
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 […]
Continue reading
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 […]
Continue reading
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 […]
Continue reading
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 […]
Continue reading
Ed Cherney has become one of the legends of the audio end of the music business, having won 3 Grammys, an Emmy award, 5 TEC awards and been inducted into the TEC hall of fame. His client list is a who’s who of great artists that include Bonnie Riatt, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Bob […]
Continue reading
If you’re a guitar player, chances are you’re in love with the distorted sound that’s so easy to create these days, thanks to a variety of amps, pedals and plugins. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a time when guitar distortion didn’t exist, but believe it, there was a time when there was no such thing. […]
Continue reading
When it comes to outboard summing mixers, there are two distinct camps. There are the mixers who claim that a summing mixer is essential to giving their in-the-box mix that analog console sound, and there are those that claim they can do just as well without one. That said, more mixers that fall into the later camp would find a […]
Continue reading
Although it may not be entirely obvious if you’re not listening carefully, music production has changed immensely from the early days of 16 and 24 track recording until now (hits made before multitrack recording were even more different by virtue of the limited tracks available). Here are some observations on how the production of today […]
Continue reading
If you’re a guitar player you may own a Les Paul, and if you’re an engineer you probably have to record one from time to time. That’s a good enough reason to learn all you can about the instrument, so here’s a great video that points out 5 things you probably didn’t know about the […]
Continue reading