Getting your vocals to sit right on top at the front of your mix is desirable for any vocal focused song. Lackluster vocal production is like a glowing neon sign that says, “home studio recording!” This tutorial covers a simple mix recipe for getting your vocals right out there in the front of your mix with clarity and presence. Show me the recipe
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Mix Recipes: Clear and present vocals
Getting your vocals to sit right on top at the front of your mix is desirable for any vocal focused song. Lackluster vocal production is like a glowing neon sign that says, "home studio recording!" This tutorial covers a simple mix recipe for getting your vocals right out there in the front of your ...
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Mix Recipes: Heavy guitar Haas and EQ
There are many approaches to mixing heavy guitar tracks. Striking a balance between clarity and thickness is a constant struggle. There is a general tendency in the recording of heavy music to layer many guitar tracks, but how do you maintain that razor's edge clarity of a single track? Here is a mi...
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Mix Recipes: Snare Drum EQ and Compression
A great snare drum sound can really drive a mix. If you start to listen critically to a lot of dance, rock, metal, modern country, pop, funk, and other kinds of popular music you will notice the next loudest thing to the vocals is typically the snare drum. No matter how much is going on in a great m...
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Mix Recipes: Kick Drum EQ and compression
There is no reason to settle for lackluster kick drum sounds on your home recording. This article explores some great mix recipes for equalizing and compressing your kick drum tracks. While every kick drum has an individual sound there are some general guidelines you can follow to get a great start ...
Mix Recipes: Heavy guitar Haas and EQ
There are many approaches to mixing heavy guitar tracks. Striking a balance between clarity and thickness is a constant struggle. There is a general tendency in the recording of heavy music to layer many guitar tracks, but how do you maintain that razor’s edge clarity of a single track? Here is a mix recipe to take a double tracked rhythm guitar, give it the thickness and stereo spread of a quad tracked guitar but the clarity of a single tracked guitar. This technique will also work on guitar styles other than metal.
Book Review: The Business of Audio Engineering
  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 |
Mix Recipes: Tom EQ and compression
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
Home recording studio on a budget
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
FX Tips – Delay: Extra wide stereo
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
Analogue versus Digital: Can YOU tell the difference?
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 »
REAPER: tempo mapping
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
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
FREE model packs with TonePort UX8 OVER
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 »