The Stereo Bus Blog - Daily Music Production Tips

This post focuses on whether or not music production and audio engineering schools are worth it.

There seems to be a constant debate between those who eschew formal education for ‘real-life’ and those who pursue formal education. Those who put school down often tout the benefits of saving the money and claim that schools are always behind the times. Those who advocate schools often suggest that schools offer opportunities for networking, prepare you for the real world, and weed out those who aren’t really serious.

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This post focuses on some stretches you can do to stay healthy when hunched over gear for long periods at a time.

Whether you’re slumped over a mixing console, a rack of gear, or a computer, producers and engineers spend a lot of time in awkward, non-ergonomic positions. So, for a bit of an odd entry, I would like to share some stretches that will help keep you from getting stiff or sore.

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This post focuses on using ring modulators, vocoders, or other tone resonating devices to produce artificial chords.

Creating unique sounds is a constant challenge.  Sometimes things just sound too ‘plain’ and you need to pull something totally off-the-wall out of your hat.  In these situations, it can be really interesting to grab resonating devices such as ring modulators, vocoders, and even pitch-correction plugins for some unconventional usage.

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This post focuses on the use of predelay to allow reverb to be added to a sound without muddying it up too much.

A lot of producers are really reverb shy these days.  It’s true that reverb can really date material… it was used so much in the 80s and 90s that a lot of what gives modern music its edge is its dryness.  You’ll find that simply plopping a reverb effect on a track with often decrease its clarity or, in the case of vocals, its intelligibility.  One way to account for this is to reduce the mix or length of the reverb.  But sometimes you really want a long reverb tail and a really wet sound.  What to do?

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This post focuses on the classic challenge of how to record a band in a single room and not have it sound completely awful.

Lots of us have small production studios and tons of bands have single room practice spaces.  Inevitably the question arises: “How can I record the band live in a single room and not have it all turn to mush!?”  There are some strategies for accomplishing decent results from this situation and, although it won’t sound like a record that was recorded in a multi-room facility or overdubbed, for some music that’s for the best.  It’s an incredible challenge that can be really rewarding.
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This post focuses on ways to insure your equipment and protect yourself from liability.

I know insurance is probably the last thing on most people’s minds when they get into music production.  Let’s face it, though… we have a lot of expensive stuff lying around and we, as businesses, open ourselves up to liability.  The good thing is that insurance for musicians and producers isn’t very expensive and, for many, it makes a lot of sense.  The two main areas of concern are equipment and liability.  Gear insurance is insurance against damage, theft, and loss of equipment.  Liability insurance is protection in case something goes wrong and you get sued.  As with most things I discuss here, there are some good strategies for mitigating both risks.

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This post focuses on the practice of sampling and its legal ramifications.

Sampling has, for years, been a routine practice in the music industry.  Sampling is taking a part of an already recorded musical composition and repurposing it in a new composition.  It used to be that people would simply sample freely, release the material, and pay up if they got caught.  But, there were a good number of high profile court cases in the early 90s that showed that this wasn’t a very legally sound practice. The whole process of sampling is complex because the owners of the composition (the publisher or the artist) and the owners of the masters (probably the label or the artist) don’t have to let you use the material at all.  This means that they can essentially ask whatever they want from you if you a) approach them with an offer or b) get caught after releasing a sampled track.

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This post. focuses on the secret rock mixing practice of using a DeEsser on overheads.

Rock overhead tracks are downright scary.  Many rock drummers constantly wash out their cymbals and play in the studio with ‘live’ cymbals that have too much presence, designed to cut through stage noise.  EQing the cymbals leaves you with mush and a loss of clarity and sheen.  What is an engineer to do?  A little known secret of the pros is to use a de-esser (essentially a special purpose multiband compressor) to cut down on the sybillance.

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This post focuses on an idea I’ve had for a while: a rolling station that can be moved easily around the studio to ease tracking difficulty when working alone.

One problem that I’ve run into is that, when working in a studio setup that includes a control room and a tracking room, it becomes very difficult to track in the tracking room by yourself.  Changing preamp settings, controlling the DAW, and monitoring all get complicated when working alone.  For a while now I’ve had an idea to create a rolling station to add on to my standard DAW setup.

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This post is a video on how to safely mount a mic on a stand.

The initial impulse of most people is to rotate the mic to screw it on the stand. This isn’t the best way to do it because a) your cable will get wrapped around the stand and b) it increases the chances you’ll drop the mic. Instead, loosen the arm portion of the stand and place the thread into the mic, rotating the arm until it’s secure. Then tighten the arm once again. See this video (my apologies for the background noise)…