  The Business of Audio Engineering price check |
Recommended for you if you are starting out in or considering a career in the audio industry.
Alternate title: War Stories - How NOT to get caught in the crossfire. Length: 205 pages split into 15 bite sized chapters and an appendix |
A great drum track is at the core of most modern popular music. Other mix recipes have covered the snare drum and kick drum, and now it is time to talk about toms. The toms can be used to add texture to particular drum fills and section transitions or they can drive an entire song. No matter which role they are filling in your track, it is important to get a sound that will allow them to cut through the mix and be noticed. Here are some helpful mix recipes to get you started with EQ and compression on your tom tracks. Get mix recipes for toms
Computers have made building an advanced home recording studio a reality for many of us. It has also caused a flooding of the market by dozens of products (and more) that all basically do the same thing. The sea of marketing created in this environment has left quite a few home recording enthusiasts scratching their heads in confusion. Below you will find some basic recommendations on the key equipment needed to start your own home recording studio. Find out more
Here is another stereo mixing trick to go along with the Haas, cross, and panned delay tricks. This technique creates a stereo sound that fills the room and appears to come from all sides of the listener’s head at the same time. The basic idea is to start with a mono track panned dead center and invert the phase one one of the channels. Your digital home recording setup is quite likely already equipped to perform this trick. Show me how to set it up
As digital gear becomes more prevalent I see the same question asked over and over again, “Should I record using the analogue outs or use the USB (or S/PDIF) outputs?” The popular answer is, “keep it digital or you’ll lose sound quality!” Is there any merit to this claim that sound quality is lost if you do not “keep it digital” all the way? Does it matter in a home recording studio which you choose? Let’s find out. Give me the test »
You may have seen my tutorials on creating grooves with EZDrummer and creating custom drum tracks with Jamstix 2. These are great when creating a song recording from scratch, but what if you have an existing recording to add drums for? What about taking any existing recording and adding some midi synths to spruce up your production? I’m going to show you how to use REAPER to take any home recording and tempo map it so you can add custom drums or midi elements after the fact, and have them be in perfect sync with your audio tracks. Show me how to tempo map my recordings
Miking drums is a subject that seems to be surrounded by a lot of voodoo in the home recording studio. I know it was certainly something I had a lot of agony over for years. Truth be told, there are really no hard and fast rules when it comes to putting microphones on drums. The purpose of this article is to give some loose guidelines to help you develop your own drum miking techniques. I have also provided some sound clips so you can hear my discussed techniques in action. Show me how to get great drum sounds
No new purchases will qualify.
The Line 6 TonePort series are great audio interfaces. The TonePort UX8 is the flagship of the series. It has eight great mic preamps with phantom power, inputs for instruments, and the ability to put Line 6’s awesome amp modeling on your tracks. For a limited time Line 6 are offering you free model packs to expand the capability of your TonePort UX8. Show me how to get free model packs »
Reverse reverb is an interesting technique that can give some extra power to well chosen song sections. In the days of reel-to-reel or cassette recording the effect was somewhat involved, requiring flipping the tape and careful calculation of which track you would record to in order to avoid overwriting another important track. In the days of the modern home recording studio we are a bit more spoiled with our computer powered DAW and software plugins. To illustrate this effect, I’ll show you how to apply it to make a simple 4/4 drum part sound much more dramatic. Show me the reverse trick
Mixing is certainly a specialized craft but I believe in learning all I can about my craft. Much of my time is occupied by reading about mixing, talking about mixing, thinking about mixing, and actually mixing. This page is intended to serve as a resource for finding some interesting mixing related material to help you hone your own craft. Our home studio is our playground and there are many books available to help us learn the ropes. Show me some mixing books »