Below you’ll find an in-depth excerpt from my upcoming course, Expert Home Vocals. Many of you have shared your stories with me about how hard it is to get a good performance from your singer, especially if they are insecure or anxious about performing. So it’s my hope that this preview of Expert Home Vocals...
This is a guest post by Gavin Whitner. If you would like to contribute a guest post to Audio Issues, please read the guest post guidelines right here. Let’s face it, choosing the best type of microphone for recording your vocals is no easy business. In fact, it’s got to a point where there are...
Back in my twenties, I chaperoned an underage indie rock group from Iceland to England while they were on tour. The town council owed the parents a favor, so they sent me to make sure certain members didn’t fall prey to liquor, vice, and sin. How well I did is a story for another day,...
I’m not sure if this is for you, but how would you feel if you knew exactly where to put the microphones on the drum kit to get the sound you hear in your head? Instead of wimpy drums that sound like a toddler playing pots and pans with a cardboard kick drum, you’d get thick...
Here’s one method for recording rock vocals I learned one year at the AES conference. The traditional method is recording the singer really close to the microphone to get an up-front sound. However, sometimes that doesn’t always work in the context of the genre you’re recording in. The Disadvantage of Recording Too Close For instance,...
I have to admit, my home studio is pretty small. When I have a full band in the studio it can get cramped fast, so it’s nice to have a backyard where the rest of the band can lounge around while we track specific members. If it were a real estate listing, it would be...
On Friday I told you my story of how I overcomplicated my guitar recording process when I first started out. A great guitar sound is crucial for making a rock song sound huge. Turns out, making it big during tracking goes A LONG WAY, and you’ll get bigger and more bad-ass guitar sounds if you just don’t...
One of my least favorite memories from recording school was when I became the stereotype that pro engineers would later talk shit about. I was an over-zealous beginner that thought More was Better. So naturally, when you’re recording guitar, you have to use as many mics as possible on the amp to get the best...
I was sitting on the toilet in my studio last week, doing what people do when they sit on the toilet in a recording studio, reading a music magazine. And all of a sudden a tiny little mouse scurries under the door, darts across the room and pops under the bathroom sink. Sure enough, when...
Parallel processing isn’t just a mixing trick. You can also use it during recording to get a better performance from your vocalist. Here’s a quick trick from the Parallel Processing Masterclass you probably haven’t heard of. “Parallel processing can make your vocals sound huge. Here are a few advanced techniques to try out when you want...