This is a guest post by Jessica Josh. If you wish to contribue to the site, please see the guest post guidelines here. All of us trying to make music these days are brutally aware of two facts: Firstly, most of the big pro studios are using Avid Pro Tools to make all the records...
Do you remember that show Bob the Builder? It was a children’s TV program about this building contractor that went around helping people with their construction jobs. But in reality it taught kids how to cooperate, be social and help one another. Basically it taught them to create relationship with people, with its foundation based...
Today I want to talk about Dynamic Range Day. It was created to raise awareness of the loudness wars and how audio production has less and less dynamic range each year. Some of those remastered records that sounded so good way back when now sound terribly squashed because somebody ran them through the newest UltraMegaMasterizaTerrorizer! You...
There are so many audio formats out there; which ones should you choose to record your audio in? An audio format is a file format that you use to store music on your computer. There are a variety of formats, like wav, mp3, aiff, wma etc. To understand the difference between various formats, we need to...
This week I interviewed producer Craig Schumacher of Wavelab Studios in Tucson Arizona. Craig is world-renowned producer. Calexico, Amos Lee, KT Tunstall, Neko Case, acts that have used his services in the past and Wavelab Studios has a reputation as a great environment to make quality music. We sat down at his studio in downtown...
The business magazine Fast Company regularly has a feature on 50 of the World’s Most innovative Companies. These were companies that were doing something new and exciting. Something different in their businesses and succeeding in their innovation. That made me think about innovations in music production and audio recording. Innovation Overdrive Take the last 60...
A long time ago, a friend of mine told me this simple technique he used to deal with a novice studio musician. You know the kind, the studio musician that might be great performer but somehow gets real stressed out in the studio. They feed off the audience when they’re playing live, rocking out and...
This is a guest post by Jamie from Audio Engineering School. 1. Find Yourself A Mentor Or Critic Mixing, recording, sound design, and all the other complexities of audio engineering are all demanding tasks. They require an in-depth understanding of acoustic concepts and principles, intimate familiarity with the computers and software that have become industry standards,...
Got this question from a reader deciding on a firewire audio interface: “I have hard time deciding which audio interface to choose: “Steinberg MR816 X” or “Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56”. I would like to know your opinion about which interface to choose. The interface’s main purpose is to record vocals (almost no live instruments) –...
Man have I got one big dirty pleasure. And for some reason comparing it to music production makes complete sense. It’s this TV show called “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” It’s from 2003 and it’s ridiculous in so many ways. But I just can’t stop watching it. Basically, the show’s about these 5 gay...