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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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 […]
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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. […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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With virtual reality becoming more and more popular, surround sound is making a comeback. While most of the concentration on the audio side of things is on mixing, the fact of the matter is that there’s a lot of interesting information that can be captured during recording. Here’s an excerpt from my Recording Engineer’s Handbook […]
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We all love vinyl and if you’re an artist you’d like to release your next album on it. The problem is the long 6 month+ wait times at the pressing plants and the big orders that you have to place just to get in line. Qrates.com offers vinyl orders for as few as 100 copies, […]
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It looks like Fairlight will be leaving the audio business soon as it recently put those assets up for sale. The Australian company has been a pioneer in digital audio in both music and more recently postproduction and has always made very robust hardware and software, but in a market that’s increasingly going downmarket in terms […]
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Even back before the cassette days engineers and producers checked their mixes in their cars. Back then, some studios maintained a low power AM transmitter on site so you could run out to your car to make a quick check, but now we use all sorts of portable files to check on everything from computers to phones to even […]
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Usually you’ll find an isolated post or song analysis here on a Friday, but after a number of years of doing that and really taking a close look at many of the classic songs that we all grew up hearing, I thought that an overall analysis would be worthwhile. The 60s and 70s were a […]
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I know that you love the look of your front studio wall so much that you hate the fact that those unsightly studio monitors are blocking it, but now there’s a solution. It’s Turtle Beach’s new Hypersound Glass speakers that have the added benefit of radiating directionally as well. Turtle Beach has been working on […]
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It’s inevitable that it’s going to happen during some point in the project. There’s going to be a strong disagreement between two of the parties involved, and the producer is going to have to diplomatically sort it out. Even worse, the conflict can come between the artist and the producer, which requires a deft hand […]
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