Sometimes a product has just one feature that everyone latches onto as most desired, which then becomes a product in its own right. That’s what’s happened with New Fangled Audio’s Punctuate plugin, which started its life as a feature on the company’s Elevate Mastering Limiter. Punctuate is a multi-band transient modulator based on the critical […]
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My guest on the podcast this week is Joe Solo, who turned a chance meeting with Macy Gray into a 17 year journey that culminated in a Grammy win, a double platinum album, and a hit MTV video. Soon afterward Joe transitioned into the world of music publishing as the head staff writer/producer for Paramount’s Famous Music Publishing […]
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If you’re interested in helping progress towards a healthy environment and you work in the music business, you’ll be happy to know that there’s actually a recycling program for guitar strings. Established by D’Addario and now joined by Martin Guitars, the Playback program has already recycled over 3.9 million strings. Playback string recycling is now […]
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I thought it was time for another peek at what it was like working back in the glory days of the 1970s. Here’s an excerpt from producer/engineer Ken Scott’s great From Abbey Road To Ziggy Stardust book that I was lucky enough to co-write. He talks about working with Elton John on his highly acclaimed […]
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There’s been all sorts of scholarly theories about the purpose of Stonehenge over the years, but it turns out that the one characteristic rarely looked at is its acoustics. A research team from the University of Salford in England reproduced the historic site in 1/12th size and placed it inside an anechoic chamber to discover […]
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For about 50 years now, the Neve 1073 pre amp and the UREI 1176 compressor/limiter have been an unbeatable combination. This versatile signal path has been used time and again on countless records and has almost always worked for recording a variety of sources. It’s getting more difficult to find the original hardware devices without […]
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My guest on the podcast this week is Kristen Agee, who is a classically trained violinist and started playing multiple instruments at the age of 7. She opened a studio in Silver Lake, California where she recorded punk bands and wrote music for various artists, all while touring as bassist after learning the instrument from Rolling Stone’s bass […]
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Avid didn’t increase it’s earnings much, but the company appears to be in much better shape financially according to its second quarter report. That’s good news if you’re a Pro Tools user. The report stated that revenue for the quarter was $98.7 million, up slightly year-over-year from $98.6 million. The operating expenses had dropped by 7% […]
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It seems like it’s difficult to do a project without using hand claps on at least one song. Sometimes they’re heard as very distinct claps, while sometimes they’re used to fatten up another element like the snare or percussion. Here’s an excerpt from the 4th edition of my Recording Engineer’s Handbook that takes a look […]
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I’m sure that many of you have seen or at least heard about Gibson destroying hundreds of Firebird X’s by running over them with a large tracked backhoe. There’s been a huge outcry about this, but this video below by the Guitologist sheds some light about the reasons why it happened. The original video that […]
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While video and film creators many times need a way to record multiple tracks of audio in the field, musicians, songwriters and producers are often faced with the same problem. Rehearsals, preproduction and songwriting sessions require documentation, and that’s were a small recorder can really come in handy. Portable 4 track recorders are everywhere, but […]
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My guest on the podcast this week is Steve Genewick, who has worked at Capitol Studios in Hollywood for 25 years and during that time he’s had the opportunity to work with a wide variety of legendary artists including Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Queen, George Harrison, Michael Jackson and many more. Steve has also been able […]
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If you’re into getting a good deal on music and audio equipment, you might want to check out the upcoming Peavey auction as the company sheds its unused or unsold gear and parts valued at as much as $12 million. Among the items on the list include nearly new products from Peavey and its various […]
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While many believe that microphone technology hasn’t really improved in at least 30 years, a host of new mics have taken the technology to the next step. Some have even become classics in their own right and can be found as standard equipment in mic lockers the world over. In this excerpt from the 4th […]
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By now most of us have heard of or experienced audio watermarking, where metadata is hidden inside the audio signal so the artist, song, record label, publisher and songwriter can be identified when it’s played. That’s been around for at least 20 years, but the idea has been taken to another level by 2 PhD […]
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