As a general rule, most musicians (especially guitar players) have no idea how to use anything that adjusts the frequency bands of their instrument, meaning an amplifier’s tone controls. The reason is that they’re never taught what tone controls are there for, and there’s not a lot of information in the manuals that comes with […]
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On this week’s podcast episode my guest is bass player, author and music business marketing consultant, Carter Fox. Known as the Soulful Traveling Spaceman Bassman, Carter has toured with R&B legend Freddie Jackson and Grammy-winner Regina Belle, while also collaborating with artists and producers such as Skrillex, Leon Huff, David Ivory, Adventure Club, and more. […]
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There are already so many emulations of classic analog audio hardware like the LA-2A and 1176 that the world doesn’t need another one. However, when a classic emulation has some truly usable modern additions, then it’s worth taking a look. Such is the case with the D16 Group Pulsatic EQ, modeled after the original analog […]
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On this week’s podcast episode my guest is modular synthesizer maven Chris Meyer, who has done important engineering work at Sequential Circuits, Digidesign, Marion Systems with the legendary Tom Oberheim, and Roland R&D U.S., where he was chief engineer. Along the way he created Vector Synthesis and worked on the Sequential Prophet 2000, Prophet VS, […]
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If you ask engineers who were active back in the analog days, they’ll tell you there are certain pieces of gear that belong in any audio “Hall of Fame.” If ever a console belonged in that esteemed hall, the Neve 8068 is it. Introduced in 1976, the 8068 was the first of Neve’s in-line monitor […]
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Every musician today has a their own home studio these days, and most have a similar problem because of it. While having a home studio makes recording yourself easier than it’s ever been, most self-producers find that it’s a lot easier to start a project than to finish one. Here’s an excerpt from the 2nd edition of […]
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Online music collaboration is for many the holy grail for efficiently working in a home studio. The problem is that most tools that are available suffer from latency that makes true collaboration impossible. SyncDNA is the first online platform that allows frame-accurate synchronization of collaborators anywhere in the world, and now it’s helping mixers, musicians, […]
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Back when I was actively mixing 5.1 surround projects, I could always count on getting a few projects where they couldn’t find the multitrack tapes. As a result, we’d have to resort to different ways of upmixing a stereo track to 5.1. Life would have been a lot simpler and the results much better if […]
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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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On this week’s podcast episode my guest is the CEO of the Merlin Network of independent music labels, Jeremy Sirota. Merlin is a member-based organization representing the digital licensing rights for hundreds of independent labels and distributors in nearly every country around the globe. That makes up 15% of the recorded music market. Under Jeremy’s […]
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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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