11 time Grammy-winner Mick Guzauski has been an A-list mixer for some time, having mixed 27 #1 hits spanning multiple genres with credits that include Daft Punk, Prince, Leann Rimes, Eric Clapton, Christina Aguilera, Talking Heads, Britney Spears, J-Lo, Michael Jackson and many more. Mick started with a basic home by in his home town of Rochester […]
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For years every mixer had their own go-to way to check a mix to make sure it would translate well to the outside world. For many it was the Auratone or NS-10, others referred to the handy boom box, some to computer speakers, and most everyone ended up evaluating their mix in the car at […]
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The Distressor is one of the few modern pieces of outboard gear that has become a classic and now stands in the same “must have” league as compressors like the 1176 and LA-2A. Simply put, it’s a standard piece found in studios everywhere today. Dave Derr is the creator of the Distressor, Fatso, and other […]
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Everyone hits a rough financial stretch at some point in their life when you need a quick infusion of cash to fend off the wolf at the door. For many, that quick cash comes by way of the pawn shop. We’ve all heard about music and audio gems that have been found in an out […]
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We’ve all been there. You’re either on stage or in the studio with a drummer that has no idea that his or her cymbals are way louder than the rest of the kit. Everything’s fine until you come to a tom fill or chorus when either the crash (the usual culprit) or the ride cymbal […]
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A recent article in The New Yorker brought back a ton of memories about how cool it was to be a musician in New York (even if you were only visiting) at one time in what seems like forever in the past. That was a time when the mecca of music stores was centered at […]
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There once was a time when an engineer didn’t feel comfortable unless there were faders in front of him or her. Those days have largely passed since now even hardened “classic” engineers are okay with a wide range of controllers. Still, there are those times when having even one fader can be useful, and the […]
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Label exec Shan Dan Horan has spent the last 10 years breaking bands during his time at Century Media Records, then as president of Artery Recordings. He’s now the head of Outerloop Records and still has a huge passion not only for finding and breaking new artists and bands, but helping ones he doesn’t sign […]
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Taking a new electric guitar and making it look old, or “relicing,” has been around for a while and is not without controversy. Is it being done to fool people into thinking that’s it’s an original model so they’ll pay more? Is it to replicate the feel of an older instrument? It’s had a lot […]
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Many artists at varying levels of success put little thought into their stage presentation, and it shows. It’s a rare performer that can captivate an audience by his or her performance alone, and most audiences, even on a club level, expect to be entertained on multiple levels these days. In the following excerpt from my How […]
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The digital world that we live in presents a big problem for artists, labels, producers, engineers, and session players, and that’s getting paid and receiving credit for the work they’ve created. Even though a song is being streamed from the likes of Spotify, Apple Music or any of the other dozens of streaming platforms doesn’t […]
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One of the things that most of us hate about the studio is having to connect gear via a patchbay. It’s a necessary evil that’s been with us since the phone company started about a hundred years ago, but it’s prone to corroded connections, intermittent patch cords, and general time-consuming setup on a large session. […]
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Imagine that you’ve been given the task of taking the vocal from an album by one of the biggest artists of all times and tasked with putting more modern music around it, but you have to make it as seamless as possible. That’s what influential Nashville engineer Ed Seay did in working on a new […]
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It often happens that we read about a great studio somewhere in the world, and most of us are interested to see what it looks like inside. The problem is that a Google search will find us some pictures that usually don’t give us a feel for what the facility and the people that run […]
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One of the things I’ve found over the years is that it’s easy to interpret the demands of a client during a mix if you understand what they’re trying to get across. It’s amazing how just a single word can describe a frequency condition if we know what to listen for. That said, it’s sometimes […]
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