New Music Gear Monday: Harrision 32Classic Channel Strip Plugin

Harrison consoles were a big part of the sound of the 70s and 80s, helping shape the sound of everyone from Michael Jackson to ABBA to Kenny Rodgers and so many more music legends. The company’s most popular console back then was the 32C, which was renowned for it sound and musical EQ section. SSL, […]

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Studio Etiquette Tips For When The Session Ends

I’ve covered studio etiquette rules here in the past, but they were primarily for when a session was in progress. When the session, or your part in it, is completed, the etiquette doesn’t stop though, as this excerpt from The Studio Musician’s Handbook (written with ace studio bass player Paul ILL) illustrates. It’s perfectly natural […]

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New Music Gear Monday: Antares Auto-Tune Vocal De-Esser Plugin

Sibilance is the bane of any mixer since many times it’s so hard to correct. While modern de-esser plugins work admirably, they usually only hit one frequency band, while most sibilance occurs at two frequencies or more. Enter the Antares Auto-Tune Vocal De-Esser that not only affects multiple frequency bands, but also uses artificial intelligence […]

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New Music Gear Monday: Universal Audio LA-6176 Channel Strip Plugin

We all love channel strips, whether they be real hardware or a virtual plugin version – and what’s not there to like? For one thing you usually get the saturation and control of the original preamp, a modeled EQ, and a compressor/limiter/gate, at the very least. The whole trick is to base it on a […]

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New Music Gear Monday: United Studio Technologies Replay Box

I’ve found that it’s always a good practice to record a direct signal as well as the amp/simulator signal when recording guitar. That way you have the ability to change the sound later if you need to, and the clean waveform makes it so much easier to edit distorted guitars. Even if you have a […]

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Big Mono And How To Avoid It

I get a lot of questions about panning, especially about hard panning and the resultant “Big Mono,” so I thought I’d provide an excerpt from The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook to address them. This applies only to the stereo soundfield as most musicians haven’t entered the immersive world yet. “One of the most overlooked or taken […]

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New Music Gear Monday: Kit Plugins BB Chamber A Reverb

There’s nothing better than a real reverb chamber as anyone who’s ever used one can attest to. The problem is that they all sound different since it all comes down to acoustic design and some construction luck. Many rate the chamber in Studio A of Blackbird Studios in Nashville as one of the best, and […]

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New Music Gear Monday: Behringer 369 Stereo Compressor

There are certain analog hardware compressors that are considered classic and have stood the test of time. Most have been modeled in the digital domain and anyone who uses a DAW today (which is almost everyone) is thankful for that, but the fact of the matter is that many mixers still prefer some analog mojo […]

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Forget About White, Pink And Brown Noise – Green Noise Is The Latest Thing

Most musicians at some time or another are exposed to pink noise as it’s usually used for speaker and room measurements. We’ve all heard white noise in the static between radio channels or on a television that isn’t tuned to a particular channel. Brown noise is low frequency and random like the sound you make […]

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New Music Gear Monday: Shure Nexadyne 8C/S Microphone

If you’re in the music business, you’ve almost certainly encountered a Shure SM57 or 58 somewhere along the way. The 58 has been the go-to microphone for sound reinforcement for almost 60 years, while the 57 has been a staple in recording studios for almost that long. Although many manufacturers have attempted to create a […]

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My Interview With Steve Albini On His Recording Techniques

Steve Albini, who unfortunately passed last week, gained his considerable experience and reputation working primarily with underground and alternative bands. While his most famous credit remains Nirvana’s In Utero, Steve worked with a diverse lineup of artists such as PJ Harvey, The Pixies, The Stooges, Cheap Trick, Silkworm, Jesus Lizard, Bush, and even the mainstream […]

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Immersive Mixing Team Matt Wallace And Will Kennedy On My Latest Podcast Episode

On my latest podcast episode, my guests this week are Matt Wallace and Will Kennedy, the Grammy-winning immersive mixing team that has done spatial mixes for Dave Matthews Band, Foreigner, The B-52s, Kid Rock, Selena Gomez and many more. Before entering into the spatial mixing world, Matt’s work as a producer includes hits for Maroon […]

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New Music Gear Monday: Relab Sonsig ACE Dimensional Expander Plugin

Musicians, engineers and producers love the chorus effect. Ever since Roland introduced it in the early 1980s, we can’t seem to get enough of it. But most chorus plugins offer only a couple of variations and sometimes that’s not enough. Enter the Sonsig ACE Dimensional Expander by Relab Development, a powerful new tool designed to […]

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The Armonica: Ben Franklin’s Music Invention That Became “The World’s Deadliest Instrument”

We all know the legendary Ben Franklin as not only one of the founding fathers of the United States, but a scientist, politician, writer and philosopher. Many know him as the inventor of the lightning rod, bifocals, swim fins and the Franklin Stove, but few know that he also invented a fascinating musical instrument called […]

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New Music Gear Monday: PSP Flare Compressor Plugin

We all have our favorite compressors, and while just about all of them do a good job this days, one of the general problems is that when it comes to really leveling out a part, when have to use a lot of compression that we end up hearing. That’s just a side effect of the […]

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