If you own a DAW then chances are you own a ton of plugins. For many it’s gotten to the point where they won’t even consider another unless it’s really something different, especially when it comes to EQ. While it’s true that almost all of the hardware equalizers of note have been modeled already, there […]
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If you were a guitar player any time during the last 58 years there was probably a period of your life where Guitar Player Magazine was your bible. When I was a kid in my first bands I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a new edition, where I knew I’d learn about the […]
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In this week’s podcast episode, sit down with the brilliant Cheryl Engelhardt, a Grammy-nominated singer, composer, speaker, and career coach. Cheryl began her music career as an advertising and film composer in New York City, creating jingles for national ad campaigns. She then pursued a career as a pop/rock singer/songwriter and had songs in television […]
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I’m sure there was a time or two when you thought, “I’d really love to use this lovely piece of outboard gear on my mix, but it’s such a pain to connect.” Depending on your computer interface, connecting analog outboard gear might be a tangle of connectors and adapters, or maybe not even possible. That’s […]
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The use of reference tracks is a topic that has been popping up a great deal lately and there seems to lots of confusion as to how to select and use them. Here’s a quick guide that will tell you all you need to know on the subject. Why Use A Reference Track? The reason […]
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In this week’s podcast episode, I sit down with the founder of IAIAI Technologies, Mick Kiely. IAIAI Technologies uses ethical AI technology to protect music copyright holder’s interests. Its GeanAI produces an AI fingerprint that profiles and tracks copyrighted works, while its QuiBot is an AI composer that is responsibly trained on music theory rather […]
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AI sometimes gets a bad rap, but when it helps you to do a job faster and better, it’s difficult to argue that it’s not useful. Such is the case with the new iZotope Aurora intelligent reverb plugin. Even going back to the analog days, mixers have always tuned their reverbs by adding EQ to […]
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In this week’s podcast episode, I sat down with producer, technologist and entrepreneur Marcus “Bellringer” Bell. Marcus has marketed, promoted, produced, remixed, written for, and mentored some of the world’s superstars and brands. His list of credits includes Nicki Minaj, Snoop Dogg, and Beyonce, as well as Discovery Network, Amazon, and Warner Bros, just to […]
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Back in the 1970s, many recording studios chose to build their own consoles rather than purchase one from Neve or API. These one-offs often sounded much better than the production units by the big manufacturers, and helped these studios crank out the hits, and as you’d expect, most have been modeled into a plugin already. […]
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Despite what you might think, there is no standard mix element to start and build a mix from. Modern mixers employ various techniques and they’re all valid, especially in different genres of music. For instance, here are the places from which a mix can be started: Then there are some mixers that just push up […]
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In this week’s podcast episode, I sat down with two legends of the rock and classical music worlds, conductor Brad Thachuk and guitarist Steve Thachuk. Brad and Steve are the founders of Gravel Museum Music, an organization dedicated to preserving the rich legacy of rock music in the concert hall by presenting the repertoire with […]
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It doesn’t matter whether you’re working with real drums, samples or loops, getting the pitch right on the drums is critical to how the song ultimately sounds. That can be a hassle though, so much so that some songs are built around the drum pitch rather than the other way around. On big budget sessions […]
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In this week’s podcast episode, I sit down with audio legend George Massenburg, who’s a Grammy-winning producer, engineer, and educator. He has also worked with some of the biggest names in the industry, such as Earth, Wind & Fire, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, The Grateful Dead, and Phil Collins. A gifted audio designer, […]
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Transient shapers have become valuable tools for mixers ever since SPL first released their hardware unit a few decades ago. Today there are numerous plugins from various manufacturers and they all have basically the same parameter controls, which, while easy to use, also sometimes fall short when small adjustments are required. The new Trinity Shaper […]
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There was a time when the music industry rushed to replace magnetic tape with a digitized version of the media stored on hard drives. It sounded like a good idea at the time, since a hard drive took up way less space than their tape-based counterparts, but 30+ years down the road we’re finding that […]
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