Internet-based Audio and Video
This article profiles Audiovideoweb.com, a company dedicated to providing practical solutions for businesses in creating web-based multimedia content. It's certainly no secret lately that audio and video are being used on the internet in increasing amounts -- and in a variety of ways. We've all heard the hype over the MP3 format and it's use for music, but the potential of various formats of audio and video on the net have created many new opportunities outside the music industry and that's what this article is about. This technology can be used for many types of multimedia presentations that previously may not...
Achieving Your Best Studio Vocal – Part One
The voice is the signature of a band. The songs will change, the musical style may even vary, but: They know the band by the singer's sound. That's not to say there aren't other instruments that can have their own signature sounds in a band. That will make the group even stronger. But the majority of listeners will not buy an album or go to a concert of a band that has a great guitar sound and yet terrible vocals. Many years ago I was ushered into the recording studio by several voice students who were running into trouble while...
Achieving Your Best Studio Vocal – Part Two
Signal Effects: The main signal processing used in headset mixes is EQ, compression, reverb and possibly digital delay. These effects should not be recorded onto tape but can be added during the mix. If used properly per your needs and taste, adding at least a bit of reverb and correct EQing of your voice to your headset mix can make a huge difference in how you sound to yourself and add ease to your singing. How you sound to yourself as you sing in the studio is paramount in supporting and achieving a good performance. If you don't like how...
How To Get Great Drum Sounds From Your Home Studio
Nothing makes a home recording, any recording for that matter, sound better than great drum sounds. Pro engineers spend more time getting their drum sounds than any other instrument on their recordings and it shows. I've personally seen situations where engineers have spent days, several days in fact getting the drums to sound just so, before they'll move ahead with the rest of the record. What a bunch of wussies! Do they actually think the drum sound will sell any more records?!! Maybe not, but it's still very satisfying to get a great drum sound, and most engineers will go to...
What You Need To Know To Get A Record Deal
Getting a record deal gets harder every year. The days of record impresarios like Phil Spector discovering a group, taking them into the studio and making them famous overnight are long gone. These days, the music business is sometimes more about the business than it is about the music. While record companies and music publishers still rely on hit songs falling from the lips of superstars to make their profits, the way they find their talent has changed a lot from the past. There actually was a time that an artist, band or songwriter could send their demo tape in to a...
Hocus Pocus — It’s All About Focus
I usually wait until the deadline draws near before I write this column. But, I just flipped the page on my daily desk calendar and was inspired to write it now by what I saw: "Keep your mind focused on what you want and act accordingly. You will achieve success." Words to live by. As a matter of fact, "Focus" is my favorite word. Everything I have achieved in my life has come to me because I was able to stay focused. I'm no rocket scientist. I didn't have anything handed to me on a silver plattter. I'm a pretty...
How I Turned A Trip To The Music Store In To Gold and Platinum Records On My Wall
Lengthy headline for a simple concept. The concept: Recognize opportunity. Seize opportunity. Be persistent as hell and you'll get what you want. This is a true story. I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show when I was about nine or ten years old. I knew at that moment that I wanted to make records when I grew up. When I was nineteen, I happened to be in a music store and overheard one of the employees say, "I'm taking this Arp String Ensemble to Criteria for Stills." I knew that Criteria was one of the largest recording studios...
Recording The Acoustic Guitar
While the acoustic guitar remains one of the most simple instruments by design, it also remains one of the hardest to get a great sound on in the studio. It's really not brain surgery, but knowing some of the basic laws of physics doesn't hurt. Unfortunately, I skipped school that day and didn't learn my physics, so I had to learn how to get a great acoustic guitar sound one mistake at a time. After making those mistakes, I sat down and formulated these laws which are considered to be the Ten Commandments of recording the acoustic guitar (by me...
The Fastest and Easiest Way to Make Money With Your Music Will Be Staring You In The Face Tonight — I Guarantee It
In one of my recent columns I wrote about recognizing opportunity and then seizing it. This month, I'm going to make it even easier for you. I'm going to show you the fastest, cheapest, and easiest way to make money with your music. I'm surprised you haven't figured it out for yourself yet. You stare at it night after night, and it stares right back at you. As a matter of fact, it even talks to you (and millions of other people). That's right you slackers, wake up and smell the half-caff, low-fat, double mocha-latte, it's your TV! Think about...
How To Get Expensive Guitar Sounds From a Cheap Home Studio
I'm always amazed by how many people working in home studios think you need a $750,000 console, a 48-track digital machine, an arsenal of $2,000 microphones, and tons of outboard gear to make your tapes sound "professional." It's just not true. What you need is some basic knowledge about the physics of audio (most of which you can learn by dropping a pebble in a puddle of water), and some pretty basic and inexpensive equipment. This is especially true for recording the electric guitar. Trust me--if it were brain surgery, I would have become a brain surgeon and made my...
Mixing Made Easy
Most people think mixing is complicated. It's really not. Most pros (myself included) like the fact that there's an air of mystery surrounding what we do. It makes us look smarter. It also allows us to charge more money. But, let's face it. It's not rocket science. It's really just the practical application of basic physics, a little bit of psychoacoustics, and a pinch of good taste. The best way to learn anything is to copy the masters. Listen with headphones. Listen with nobody else around to bother you. Shut your eyes. Take a blank piece of paper and diagram what...
How To Get A Great Bass Sound In Your Home Studio
I spent more time in the early part of my engineering career trying to get a great bass sound than anything else. I tried going through a direct box. I tried miking the amp. I tried different amps. I tried different mics. I tried everything! No matter how hard I tried, I always fell short of the mark. I went in search of the Holy Grail for bass sounds but never found it. I realized with time that the answer wasn't a singular prescription for success, but a collection of techniques that could be used as each situation dictated. The...
How Good Do Your Demos Have To Be?
"Good" is a subjective term. It can mean a couple of things when used in the context of making demo tapes. "Good" can mean the song (with a slant toward "hit" potential), or it can mean the engineering or production values on the tape. If the ultimate use of your demo is to land a record deal, and not to impress your friends and relatives, then this article is for you. Imagine this scenario: The Vice-President of A&R at a major record label is sitting in his office listening to tapes (which by the way is how they typically spend less...
Setting Up The Ultimate Digital Home Studio – Part One
Welcome to the first installment of my column on setting up and getting the most out of a home recording studio. We've left the world of tape machines and mixing consoles behind and put the entire studio inside an ordinary computer. My goal for this little slice of cyberspace is to provide, on an ongoing basis, a discussion of the process of recording in an all-digital environment. We're going to start with the basics of setting up a "virtual" studio, the hardware and software and various options therein. Over the next few installments I'll be covering the techniques of recording and...
Setting Up The Ultimate Digital Home Studio – Part Two
Welcome to the second installment of the Virtual Studio! We're going to pick up where part one left off and cover the remaining hardware you need to get the PC ready for digital recording... the soundcard. The soundcard is responsible for converting audio signals to digital information to be recorded, and conversely, it turns the results of your recording editing and mixing back into audio and puts it into the real world again. These days pretty much all the new home computers are sold with some type of sound card for at least basic audio capabilities. Among these commonly found...
Setting Up The Ultimate Digital Home Studio – Part Three
Welcome to the third installment of the Virtual Studio! In the first two issues we covered the hardware needed to put together a PC based studio. What I'm going to get into now is the software side of the equation. There is so much software out now that deals with recording and/or editing that the range of choices is enormous but we can break them down into a few categories and then talk about the features that we really need to do a given job. Since the focus of this article is on the PC as a home studio and...
Setting Up The Ultimate Digital Home Studio – Part Four
Welcome once again to the Virtual Studio. This is the fourth instalment in the series and I'm going to back up just a bit to cover a few items in more detail. We discussed soundcards previously and based on some of the email I've received there are a couple points I would like to make as well as a couple products that It might be helpful to mention. My first recommendation for anyone buying all the components with the intention of recording high quality audio is to get an audio card intended for the job such as the Gina from Event...
Setting Up The Ultimate Digital Home Studio – Part Five
Welcome to the Fifth installment of the Virtual Studio! In this issue we're going to walk through the process of tracking a song with attention to the various options available in the digital audio and MIDI environment. In the old days of tape the first consideration was usually how many tracks were available and then deciding how many tracks could be used for the drums and the various instruments and vocals. If you had 24 tracks or more you had the luxury of tracking the drums with as much separation as possible and leaving them on individual tracks so that...
Setting Up The Ultimate Digital Home Studio – Part Six
This is the Sixth instalment of the Virtual Studio and as I mentioned last time I'm going to go into detail about a couple aspects that are specific to digital recording. How the digital domain changes our use of EQ and compression. This is something I have heard very little discussion about and I welcome any input from other engineers and musicians in this area. As I have probably alluded to in the past, I first started recording in the days before the all digital gear was available and so I adapted my engineering practices to the new way of...
Setting Up The Ultimate Digital Home Studio – Part Seven
Well, it's a new year and a new century and high time I wrote a new installment of this column! Over the last few months I have received many emails and have responded to as many as I can. The questions I have been getting have shaped the subject matter of this segment. What I am realising is that there are a lot of misconceptions out there about what it really takes to record at home on a computer and how this all works in the real world. When I started the column I originally intended it to be read...