Music Production Tips – The Stereo Bus Blog

This post focuses on a unique way to produce backwards phrases with any instrument.

I used to have a bit of a fascination with backwards sounds when I got my first computer sound card. I would record my voice and play it backwards or record an instrument and play it backwards. At one point I realized that backwards sounding things could be played forwards and then reversed. So I tried speaking a word, reversing it, then record my attempt to reproduce the backwards sound with my mouth. After that, I would reverse my backwards attempt and see how close I could get to the original word. If I did it well, I sounded either like I had a speech problem or I was British, depending on kind you want to be to a Liverpool accent.

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This post focuses on digital sync between PCM digital audio devices.

Digital has been marketed and is generally understood to be bit-for-bit perfect, resilient to noise, and able to be copied infinitely without any reduction of quality. This is true… to a point. Digital audio is essentially data, reinterpreted as audible information. But, underneath all the simplicity of the digital medium lies quite an elaborate system of error correction and synchronization. Did you know that the hard drive in your computer routinely has data errors? There’s software running in your computer that looks for these errors and corrects them as the drive is accessed. Digital is a balancing act and the goal is to have it all balance out to zero errors.

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This post focuses on how to create a professional looking and sounding portfolio disc that won’t make more enemies than friends.

A good portfolio will open up a lot of doors for you as a producer or engineer. What makes a great portfolio? Well, it obviously should sound good. That depends on the quality of your work – you just have to not screw it up if it’s already solid. With a portfolio it also has to look good. Let’s face it – a lot of people to whom you’ll want to be dropping off your CD will be getting a lot of submissions. So what does that require? First, choose if you want to make a CD or a DVD. A CD is definitely easier, but a DVD is still a little unusual. If any of your material has been made into a music video or used in film, it’s great to include the visuals as well. Additionally, DVDs can display album artwork and additional information on the screen. It’s really up to you and your resources.

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This post focuses on convolution as it applies to audio – the capturing and reapplication of the qualities of sound.

A few years ago some new-fangled audio processing engines started to leak out of the lab and into the market involving a process called convolution. The name convolution comes from the type of math involved, but applying the process to audio signals provides for some pretty interesting opportunities.

Essentially, the process of convolution really requires two things: deconvolution and convolution. It’s actually a little backwards from the conventional use of the prefix ‘de’, although that again comes from its math roots. Deconvolution is the process of capturing the audio changes imposed upon a signal when fed through an environment, whether that be a physical room or a piece of equipment. Convolution is the process of applying those changes to a different signal. So, in essence, deconvolution would be ’sampling’ the way an environment affects the signal, whereas convolution would be making that sample into an effect, which is applied to other signals.
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This post focuses on tracking the snare drum, both on its own and as part of a kit.

I’m going to do a series on recording various instruments, from drums to woodwinds, and I’ve decided to do the snare first. Drums are a tricky bunch of instruments. They’re loud, bleed like hell, and generally don’t sound anything on tape like they sound in the room. Snare is probably the most complex of the standard components of the drum set. The top head is usually fairly tight and the material of the shell can be anything from aluminum to solid maple, each with unique characteristics. The bottom has the snares, strips of metal that vibrate against the bottom head when the drum is hit, which gives the drum its distinctive rattle. The top head is where the attack happens, the bottom head is where the crunch happens, and the tone is shared between the two. This means that you really need at least two microphones to get a complete picture of a snare drum. I would argue you may even need three to get the best snare sounds.

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This post focuses a few quick tips for billing your clients and managing the delivery of the product of your service.

I’ve done some work for really professional clients and some work for very unprofessional clients. One things I’ve learned is that solid billing and delivery standards make a world of difference.
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This post focuses on the process of recording your MIDI sequenced tracks to audio tracks.

Bouncing is the process of recording one or more tracks of audio to one or more other tracks of audio. I think the term comes from the days when tape channels were limited and multiple tracks of audio had to be condensed to a mono track or stereo pair. Why is it called ‘bouncing’, specifically? Because ‘rerecording’ is boring and ‘flootzing’ made the engineer crack up, reducing the efficiency of the session.

These days we have all the audio tracks we could ever need in our computers. But bouncing is still quite useful for many reasons. One of the best reasons is the preservation of sequenced instruments such as synths or samplers, especially virtual instruments. The fact of the matter is that MIDI is completely dependent on the MIDI instrument to produce the sound. If your precious vintage synth were to kick the bucket or if you loose the dongle for your favorite virtual instrument, you won’t be able to play back the track. Bouncing to audio has two advantages: a) if the instrument is a virtual instrument, you’ll save the CPU usage imposed by real-time playback b) should something ever happen to your instrument, you can still work with the audio track.
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This post focuses on the use of piezo sensors and pickups in pro audio applications.

Most people don’t think of piezo technology very often. Basically, piezoelectric sensors involve using mechanical vibrations against the sensor to create a signal. It’s a unique way to generate sound and signal, meaning that it can be used in applications where traditional sound capturing devices don’t work well. In fact, sometimes piezo sensors are called contact microphones. Some common applications include acoustic guitar pickups and drum triggers, but there really is no reason why you couldn’t use piezo sensors anywhere that produces vibration (and therefore, sound).

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This post focuses on the differences between balanced and unbalanced connections.

When I first started engineering my high school band, I didn’t know what the difference between balanced and unbalanced connections was. I used guitar cables to link up all of 1/4″ gear and routinely used impedance transformers to convert between XLR to 1/4″ unbalanced. I thought the extra ring on TRS cables was just some weird novelty. Not so.

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This post focuses on the availability of free, open source software for audio production.

Free Open Source Software (or FOSS for short) has been with us for a good while now, the most popular example of it being the high profile alternative web browser Firefox, sponsored by the Mozilla corporation. Open Source software means that anybody can download the code, use it, and redistribute it – and it’s completely legal. Obviously this can be a huge advantage to folks with modest budgets or who are strong supporters of intellectual property freedom. Ubuntu Linux, my operating system of choice, has been making strong inroads in taking a share of the market. Recently there has been a lot of progress made on audio software in the open source community. Since I featured the FOSS program Audacity in my last post on noise reduction, I got inspired to feature some of the exciting projects coming out of the community.
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