If you’ve ever heard about dithering audio but aren’t totally sure what it means, you’re not alone! Dither is often applied as part of processing digital audio. For instance, it’s one of the final steps in mastering audio for CD.…
In phase vs out of phase | FAQ Friday
We’re back – actually back! As you know I’ve been away for 3 1/2 weeks on a very long family holiday! I want to thank you ever so much for being patient with the last few FAQ Fridays. I’ve been…
Free Multitracks: Jay Clifford’s “Paralyze”
I have something exciting for you today: free multitracks! The multitracks we are giving away today are from Jay Clifford's track "Paralyze". I had the opportunity to help record and produce the entire album that this track was on, and…
Butch Walker: Songwriter & Record Producer | Studio Tour & Interview
Butch Walker is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer. He was born in Georgia and currently splits his time between Nashville and Los Angeles. In the late '80s and early '90s, he played lead guitar for a glam metal called SouthGang. Butch was…
Jellyfish’s ‘Bellybutton’: Inside the Album with Roger Joseph Manning Jr.
Roger Joseph Manning Jr. is an American power pop and electronic rock musician, singer, and songwriter with a prolific career in the industry. Roger's musical career began as early as 1989, when he started arranging string, brass, wind, and vocal…
Hole’s “Celebrity Skin”: Inside the Song with Michael Beinhorn
The last time we were with Michael Beinhorn we took a look at “Coma White” by Marilyn Manson, which he produced! Now we’re breaking down “Celebrity Skin" by Hole, which is the debut single from the 1998 album of the…
The Best Amp Simulator Hardware and Plugins
There are a lot of benefits to going the amp simulator route as a guitarist. Cost and versatility are both huge advantages over real amps, because modelers can give you access to hundreds of different heads, cabinet, and effects sims…
The Benefits of Recording a Scratch Track
A scratch track is a rough playthrough of a song, or section of a song, that acts as a guide while recording other instruments. It’s usually just a couple instruments, like a rhythm guitar and vocal playing along to a…
Recording Metal Guitars with David Gnozzi
David Gnozzi is a platinum mixing/mastering engineer and producer, and the creator and host of the popular YouTube channel MixbusTV. David has an extensive knowledge of mixing and audio gear as he has worked as a professional songwriter and arranger,…
Roger Joseph Manning Jr: Blink-182, Beck, Paramore, Marianas Trench
Roger Joseph Manning Jr. Roger Joseph Manning Jr. is an American power pop and electronic rock musician, singer, and songwriter with a prolific career in the industry. Roger’s career began as early as 1989, when he began arranging string, brass,…
PhantomFocus System: Studio Tour with Carl Tatz
Carl Tatz is an award winning studio designer and principal of Nashville-based Carl Tatz Designs. Carl draws his expertise as a studio designer and acoustician from over thirty years of experience as a GRAMMY-nominated engineer/producer, award-winning studio owner (Recording Arts),…
Mixing Basics: Vocal Compression
Today, we will be going over the basics of mixing vocals. Earlier, we balanced the mix using just panning and volume and got the mix to a place where we could start making better decisions. In this video, we are…
John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s ‘Double Fantasy’: Inside the Album w/ Jack Douglas
We've spent a lot of time with the amazing Jack Douglas over the past several weeks! He told us how he got Cheap Trick signed to their first record deal, what it was like working with Aerosmith throughout the '70s,…
The Best Drum VSTs for Any Budget
The best drum VSTs we’ve gathered run the gamut between $89 all the way up to $700! Thankfully, this means there’s a variety of choices to suit any budget. Of course, there are free options as well so you can…
How to Mix Vocals Like a Pro
We’ve all struggled with mixing vocals at some point! It’s easy to feel frustrated when we just can’t seem to get it right, especially because vocals are so important for the listener. Fortunately, there are some standard as well as…
In the Box or Hybrid: How do I prefer to mix? | FAQ Friday
Happy Friday! Hope your week has been marvellous! As always, we have a couple wonderful questions to answer for you today. And we have an exclusive clip from our Berlin Masterclass! So, let’s get into today’s featured question! “I see…
Piper Payne: Mastering Engineer and Vinyl Technologist
Piper Payne is a mastering engineer, educator, and active member of the audio community based in Oakland, CA and Nashville, TN. The biggest recent update from Piper is the company she started in Oakland (Neato Mastering) has now joined famed Infrasonic…
Recording Live to Vinyl with Reid Shippen & Pete Lyman
While we were in Nashville recently, we had the pleasure of capturing Reid Shippen and Pete Lyman recording an artist live to disc. The artist literally was playing in the other room, while Reid mixed the track and it was sent…
Tony Buchen Interview & Studio Tour
I was very recently turned onto Coil Audio amplifiers and Tony Buchen was the recommended user that I talk with to hear more about their amazing products. So when we had the opportunity to visit Tony Buchen we couldn't pass…
Augustana’s “Sweet and Low”: Inside the Song with Warren Huart
Augustana is a rock band perhaps best known for the song "Boston" off their debut album, All the Stars and Boulevards. They also had a tremendous hit with "Sweet and Low" from their follow-up record Can't Love, Can't Hurt, which Warren co-produced and…
David Gilmour’s Guitars Fetch $21,500,000 at Auction to Fight Climate Change
In what will most certainly go down as one of the most historic instrument collections of all time, 120 of David Gilmour’s guitars were auctioned this week at Christie’s in New York City. All of the proceeds from the auction will…
How to Use a Compressor – Intermediate Techniques
We’ve talked a lot about how to use a compressor in various stages of the recording and mixing processes. The best way to learn is to get your hands dirty, which you’ll be able to do with some of these…
Make your home studio sound like Abbey Road Studio 3
Imagine if you could mix your music in one of the finest sounding controls rooms in the world. Well, that is what Waves have done here with Abbey Road Studio 3. They’ve taken their NX Technology and combined it with…
Vance Powell: Multi GRAMMY Winning Engineer, Mixer, & Producer
Vance Powell is 6x GRAMMY winning recording/mixing engineer and record producer. He's based in Nashville where he works out of Sputnik Sound alongside studio owner and fellow GRAMMY-winning producer, engineer, and songwriter, Mitch Dane. We met with Vance to talk about…
Room Calibration at Echo Bar Studios (The Moving Mic Method)
Today I'm sitting with two great friends Charles Sprinkle from Kali and Erik Reichers from Echo Bar Recording Studios. We’re here to talk about room acoustics, this is an important subject that I get asked about at least 10 times…
3 Guitar Amp Micing Techniques
This episode we’re going to go over recording guitar! I have a carl Martin BandMate 15 Roadie, which is a fairly clean amp but you can drive it with a gain pedal. In this instance, I’m going to keep it…
Audio Test Kitchen Has Revolutionized the Microphone Shootout
We recently met with the fantastic Alex Oana at Gold-Diggers in Los Angeles to check out his rather amazing endeavors with Audio Test Kitchen! Audio Test Kitchen is a free online resource aiming to change the way we audition microphones. They’ve…
How to Do Reverse Reverb in 3 Easy Steps
Reverse reverb, sometimes called reverse echo or reverse regeneration, simply takes the reverb tail of any instrument and reverses it. Creating it is a matter of printing the wet signal of a reversed audio track. Reverse reverb is typically accompanied…
The Top Virtual Amp Sims for Guitarists
A great virtual amp can take your guitar recordings to the next level since not many of us can record a 100-watt tube head at home. There are attenuators, sure, and lots of modern amps are being built with direct…
Should Your Studio Be Climate Controlled? | FAQ Friday
In this week’s FAQ Friday we have a lot of very very wonderful questions including, “How much can climate control in your room affect your recording?” The reality is, you don’t want to be in an incredibly dry room, obviously,…
Recording Drums at Blackbird Studios
As you know we recently had a Masterclass in Nashville, TN at Blackbird Studios! While we were there we had the wonderful Nate Onstott with us and we tracked with two completely different drum setups in studio A! - The…