I’m proud to introduce the first animated cartoon from Audio Issues, talking about the mythical Step By Step Mixing System 1,000: Of course, the Step By Step Mixing System blender only exists in the video, but I can offer you something even better, the best-selling mixing book, Step By Step Mixing: How to Create...
Have you ever thought about what makes you stand out as an engineer? Why would anybody hire you instead of any of the thousands of engineers rolling off the conveyor belt of audio school this year? When I used to Shark Tank pitch my old audio startup to investors I would always have to know...
One of my favorite lines from the new Avengers movie, Infinity War, is when my god Thor is talking to the Guardians of the Galaxy. In fact, the whole scene where they’re interacting with each other on the spaceship is fucking hilarious, but this one line really made me laugh. On the spaceship, they’re talking...
You might have heard the advice that it’s always a good idea to check your mix against a reference mix. But what does that mean? What kind of reference mix? How do you go about doing that? What is a Reference Mix? A reference mix is a commercial quality mix that’s usually been mixed and released...
Tourists are so hot for Iceland right now it’s exhausting. Whenever somebody excitedly tells me they’re going, I tell them, Don’t. It’s overpriced and full of tourists. It’s a combination of a joke and a warning. I tell them: if you’re going, treat my country well. There are too many idiot tourists out there with...
My friends at Roswell Pro Audio have been great to me in the last month. They let me borrow a pair of their K47s as well as a couple Delphos condensers to try out. And let me tell you, they did not disappoint. I’ve been using them on voice-over, vocals and acoustic guitar recording in the...
Impossible. Unheard of. Won’t happen. This has always been my assumption: Musicians are always going to play differently during the band soundcheck in an empty room than they will with their adrenaline pumping in a full-house. For this reason, I have always just tried to complete band soundchecks as quickly as possible, knowing that many...
Getting a powerful drum sound can be one of the most challenging tasks an engineer can face. One of the requirements of my final project back at SAE (School of Audio Engineering) was that it had to have real acoustic drums because the school wanted you to know how to record drums. Because drum recording...
Vocal EQ’ing can be frustrating. Sometimes it seems to sound like it was stuck on later, and doesn’t flow with the rest of the track. Below are the six frequency ranges you can start with when you are in trouble and need to figure out how to equalize your vocal so that it sits better with...
If you’re looking for new arrangement ideas for guitar, check out my 4 ways to a groovier guitar production. 1. Find the Sweet Spot The sweet spot is where the instrument sounds the best. Usually this is a pretty subjective sound, but there are some guidelines to go by. Acoustic Guitar – The sweet...