Latest Articles
Tracking a Band in a Single Room…
February 16, 2008 TrackingThis 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 [...]
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Insurance Got Your Back? Gear & Liability
February 15, 2008 InsuranceThis 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 [...]
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Sampling: Legally Ambiguous Like Whoa
February 14, 2008 Licensing, Music Business, SamplingThis 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, [...]
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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 [...]
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Idea: Rolling Tracking Station
February 12, 2008 DIY, TrackingThis 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 [...]
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How to Safely Put a Microphone on a Stand
February 11, 2008 MicrophonesThis 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 [...]
Read More »Quieting Your Computer and Noisy Gear
February 10, 2008 DAWsThis post focuses on how to reduce the noise produced by gear, thus producing cleaner recordings. Anyone who has worked on audio with a typical desktop PC gets to know the hum and fan noise of their PC very well. There are lots of different ways to get a quieter environment, from moving the equipment [...]
Read More »How MIDI Works: The Basics
February 9, 2008 MIDIThis post focuses on describing MIDI – what it is and what it does. Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) was created in 1983 to address the need for controlling instruments electronically. As synthesizers grew more and more common, it became more and more difficult to control them all. MIDI was created to allow musicians to [...]
Read More »11 Pointers for Buying and Selling Gear
February 8, 2008 Buying & SellingThis post focuses on some tips for getting the most for your equipment when you decide to flip it on the market. I worked in used music store for three years not only as a salesman but also as a buyer. It’s an interesting job, particularly in the city: I caught some thieves, made some [...]
Read More »Adding Real Ambience After-the-Fact
February 7, 2008 Mixing, TrackingThis post focuses on capturing ambience by playing back and re-recording sounds in acoustic spaces. The idea of piping sounds into a space and retracking it isn’t new by any stretch of the imagination. Before the advent of reverb processors it was common practice to route audio to speakers in reverb chambers to achieve ambient [...]
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