You may never work in a studio that has an assistant engineer, and if you own your own gear, you may never be one yourself, but it’s good to find out what an assistant in a major facility such as the Record Plant, Capitol, or United Recording really needs to know. Some of these tips come […]
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Grammy-winning engineer Sylvia Massy is on a quest to write the ultimate book on microphones, and it’s taken her all around the world to find both historical artifacts on microphone design and the designers themselves. One stop was to the famed Abbey Road Studios for a look at their totally unique collection of mics. In […]
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If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking that the last thing the audio world needs is another vintage mic clone. There are already so many good ones available at some great prices. That said, Warm Audio has a way with vintage gear copies that seems to capture the essence of the product that many boutique […]
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The work of Al Schmitt is and always has been the gold standard for recording engineers. Capturing the natural sounds going down in the studio isn’t always easy, but Al is the master and makes it look a lot easier than it looks. Here’s a great video which shows Al prepping a big band session. […]
Continue readingYou probably looked at the title of this post and thought I lost my mind so early in the new year, but actually there’s a very interesting acoustic phenomena that’s been going around where some people hear the word “Yanny” while others hear “Laural. Let’s give it a try. If you heard “Yanny” like I […]
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There are a number of different types of compressors that every engineer is familiar with, but there’s not a lot of information available about the differences between them and what they’re good at. Most compressor plugins today are based on the four different electronic building blocks that could be used to build a compressor back […]
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Happy New Year and thank you again for your support! Here we are on the cusp of a new year again. That’s why its time to gaze into the crystal ball to see what awaits us. In this week’s Inner Circle Podcast episode I’ll take a look at some of the things that we can expect in […]
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Fabfilter’s Pro-Q 2 EQ plugin is one of the great joys of mixing. Clean, easy to use, great visual feedback – it’s difficult to believe that it could get any better. But it has! The new Pro-Q 3 update adds a number of features that you probably didn’t realize that you needed to make the […]
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Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is being used everyday for a wide variety of uses online, so it’s no surprise that music is being generated using it. While it might not win any awards, in most cases it’s at least passable. But music is mathematical by nature, which makes it a good candidate for AI creation. […]
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I’m pretty tired about writing about Gibson Brands, but the company keeps on managing to stay in the news, usually not in a positive way. Gibson was sailing through bankruptcy and looked like it was about to exit when it ran into trouble again. To recap, the company got into a big financial hole trying […]
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A Gibson PAF Humbucker A number of readers recently asked some questions regarding the sound of vintage instruments, which prompted me to think about this excerpt from The Ultimate Guitar Tone Handbook (written with writer, composer and good buddy Rich Tozzoli) that describes some of the intangibles that went into manufacturing Gibson humbucking pickups in the 50’s and 60’s. As […]
Continue readingMerry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Thank you so much for being a part of courses, blogs, books and podcasts this year. I truly appreciate your support! You might find my latest Inner Circle Podcast episode interesting in that it’s a look back at all of the interesting stories in music business in 2018, and there sure were […]
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There are a lot of great audio interfaces available for your computer but most of them are limited in the number of inputs and outputs. If you have a home studio that’s usually not a problem, but if you plan on doing some serious tracking or using a real console for mixing then a normal […]
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My guest on the podcast today is Laurence Juber, who’s truly one of the world’s most remarkable acoustic guitar players. Laurence has a big history on both electric and acoustic guitar actually, starting as a busy session player in his home town of London before joining Paul McCartney’s Wings. After the band folded he resumed his session career first […]
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One thing that most young musicians aren’t prepared for is hearing problems later in life. Playing loudly can be a lot of fun, especially in a hot band (the genre doesn’t matter) with an excited crowd. It’s so easy to not even consider hearing protection, but sometimes all it can take is one incident to […]
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