Music Production Tips - The Stereo Bus Blog

This post focuses on the process of removing noise that has made its way into your content using digital processing.

While it’s always best to avoid noise in ther first place by recording in a quiet environment, using well grounded equipment, and using balanced cables, it’s sometimes unavoidable that some noise will have crept its way into your recordings. Also, often you’ll receive tracks from another engineer or an artist that have been recorded using less-than-optimal conditions. To illustrate the techniques used in this post, I’ll be using a free, open source program called Audacity (I’m a big fan of FOSS software, but most of the FOSS audio software has a ways to go before it is as effective and as stable as commercial software. I use Audacity in this example mostly because the techniques are more or less the same regardless of what application you use.)

Read the rest of this entry »

This post focuses on the placement of sounds in the stereo image during the mix process.

Proper use of stereo imaging in a mix is probably almost as important (or even more important in sparse mixes) as equalization, yet it is largely overlooked as an area for improvement in engineers and producers of beginner and intermediate experience. Intelligent panning and equalization compose about 80% of a good mix, in my opinion.

Read the rest of this entry »

This post is focused on the simple, neglected, and powerful practice of labeling tracks in a session.

This post may seem like something entirely obvious that should remain unspoken… but it isn’t. You would be surprised how often I have seen session tracks titled “New Track” and audio files named “Untitled1.wav”. The first step to organizing your sessions is labeling your tracks well. Every little bit of efficiency and extra brainpower that can be saved makes things run smoother and cheaper.

The general rule of DAW software labeling is that all of your audio files will inherit their names from the tracks on which they were recorded. This means that simply throwing up a track called “New Track”, recording on that, and renaming the track after-the-fact will result in a disorganized mess of audio data. It’s really important to not be lazy here.

There are some conventions in the industry for naming tracks and I’m going to describe them. Sessions that are clearly labeled will make your collaborators giggle like schoolgirls. If that image in your head makes you smile, follow me…

Read the rest of this entry »

This post focuses on the various ’standard’ ways to get a stereo image with microphones.

A class-A stereo image is one of the holy grails of audio engineering. It’s easy to get a decent image, but to achieve a stereo image that condenses down to mono, sounds rich, and evenly captures the entire performance is very difficult.

Most stereo techniques involve using two microphones but there are some that use more. Additionally, there are some very good stereo mics on the market such as the Studio Projects LSD-2 or the time-honored, appropriately expensive AKG C24.

Read the rest of this entry »

The focus of this post is on capturing SysEx information from external MIDI devices in order to have a record of your presets right in your session or automate the settings throughout the track.

It happens to producers time and time again: you’ve created an awesome synth sound or guitar tone, you’ve recorded the midi part, but when you load up the session to work on it some more your sounds are completely different! Oh no! You didn’t save the preset…

Don’t let this happen to you! There are a ton of cool things you can do with a special feature of MIDI called SysEx. Essentially, SysEx is a way for a MIDI device’s system settings to be transfered over MIDI. This means that you can save the settings to the patches on a synth, guitar tones on a MIDI capable modeler, or automation/device states on a capable digital mixer.

Read the rest of this entry »

This post focuses on creating individual mixes of elements called stems, and also on creating alternate mixes.

It’s pretty common in music production to, during the mixing process, print many different versions of the track to tape. Some examples might be: just the brass section (for performing the song live), a vocal +1 or -1 mix, an a cappella version, or a no-vocals (or just backgrounds, ie. karaoke) version.

Read the rest of this entry »

This post focuses on wrapping cables so that they unravel easily without knots or annoying insulator memory. Roadie wrap!

It’s way easier just to demonstrate with a video…

This post focuses on registering your music business with Uncle Sam to avoid liability, tax issues, and better business structuring.

I know, I know… registering a business is about as fun as a broken fretboard, but it’s a good idea when you start out. There are a lot of reasons why registering (and registering as the right type of business) is a good idea, but I’m going to focus on liability, structure, and taxes.
Read the rest of this entry »

This post focuses on capturing multiple guitar sounds, including unamplified, during tracking for more tonal flexibility during the mix.

A unique guitar tone is one of those things that people are always willing to great lengths to achieve. Some of the most coveted tones have actually been blends of multiple amplifiers, certainly of multiple microphones. So what are some ways to get the best of both worlds?

Read the rest of this entry »

This post focuses on the basics of digital audio: sample rate, bitrate, and how analog signals are represented digitally.

We use digital audio all the time, but I am surprised on a fairly regular basis how many people are unclear about how digital audio works. Digital audio has two primary qualities that compose the way the audio is described. These two qualities correlate to the qualities of real world sounds more like metaphors than anything else. Real sounds have frequencies and volumes. In order to measure real world sounds and represent them digitally, we have created sample rate and bitrate as digital’s audio qualities. Sample rate determines how analog frequencies are described digitally whereas bitrate determines how analog volume is described digitally. The two qualities need each other in order to describe a sound. You can’t have volume without frequency or frequency without volume.

Read the rest of this entry »