Archive for the ‘Effects’ Category
Mono Sources in a Stereo World – Michael Franti @ RNC
July 14, 2009 Delay, Effects, Restoration, ReverbRecently I was hired to finesse a rather rough live recording of Michael Franti‘s performance at the protest concert outside the Republican National Convention in 2008. The recording was done with a pair of shotgun mics placed fairly close to each other.
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Review: Ohm Force Ohmicide Distortion Plugin
May 6, 2009 Distortion, PluginsLast post I took some time to write up a review for Ohm Force‘s Symptohm synthesizer. This time around I’ll be looking at their Ohmicide multiband distortion plugin. I’m a sucker for distortions and was pretty excited to give it a spin.
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How to Use Visual Audio Analyzers and Scopes
March 4, 2008 Plugins, VisualizationThis post focuses on ways to use visual audio scopes to gain more understanding about what’s going on in your audio. It’s important to state right off the bat that working with audio should primarily be an auditory experience. In general people won’t be looking at visual representations of audio as much as they will [...]
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How to Use Analog Tape as an Effect
March 3, 2008 Tape Machines, Tape SaturationThis post focuses on the use of analog tape’s warm, unique compression as an effect. When engineers and producers started to make the switch from analog to digital, they found that digital was not only cleaner sound, but it was also somewhat unforgiving. Most producers were quite fond of ‘driving’ the tape a bit by [...]
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Ring Modulating (or Vocoding) to Produce Artificial Chords
February 18, 2008 EffectsThis 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 [...]
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Predelay: Improve Clarity of ‘Verb
February 17, 2008 Effects, ReverbThis 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 [...]
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Taming Rock Cymbals with… a DeEsser!?
February 13, 2008 DeEssers, Drums, MixingThis 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 [...]
Read More »Increasing Attack with Gates
February 6, 2008 Gates, MixingThis post focuses on the trick of increasing the attack of sounds using gates. Most people reach for EQ or compression when they want to add punch to their sounds. But I’ve found another way to accomplish a very specific kind of attack transient using gates. I sometimes use this trick to add attack kick [...]
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