Elliot Scheiner is one of the top producers/engineers in the world, with 24 Grammy nominations, 7 Grammy awards, 4 Emmy nominations,  1 Emmy award, 3 TEC Awards nominations, etc.... The list goes on!  Even if you don't know his name, you have most certainly heard his work. Yesterday I had to chance to meet Elliot […]

I'm really starting to get into remixing, even though I'm not a dance club, DJ type producer.  I certainly don't keep up with modern dance music trends, even though I do enjoy the music.  Instead, what I like to do is to take the songs in a different direction than you would expect for a […]

Breakdown of the mix of Ben Smith's drums The drummer for Heart, Ben Smith, helped me out with some drum tracks for one of the songs I co-wrote with Coreena, "If You Wanna".  We tracked the drums at the famous London Bridge Studio, which has a HUGE room, and then I mixed them in my […]

Want bigger & fuller sounding songs?  Less is More! The biggest problem I encounter with inexperienced artists, producers, and engineers these days is that there is too much of everything.  Too many parts in the song arrangements.  Too many tracks in the recording.  Too many plugins in the mix.  Too many frequencies competing with each […]

Even with pop filters in front of a microphone, plosives (pops) can still be an issue with some vocalists. However, there is a relatively simple fix that can quickly reduce or eliminate those loud pops from your vocal tracks.  Use a high-pass filter, or low shelving EQ, to roll off the low end of the […]

Revised & Updated! This is an old article I wrote in the early 90s. Quite a bit has changed since then, but most of the advice here still applies. With the reworking of my site in 2012, I have gone through this article and made some additions and revisions to make it more relevant. MAXIMIZING […]

DAWs are a very specialized application that requires a high performance machine that is stable, and where all the hardware works together without any conflicts with your audio interface and other devices. The wrong choices can lead to random clicks, pops, and other audio glitches, or simply not being able to achieve a low enough latency to work effectively with VST instruments. In the worst cases, hardware conflicts can cause random crashes or freezes, or the system may not even boot up.

Many young engineers, and home recording enthusiasts, have never worked with an analog console before, and they only mixer they have ever used is that built into their DAW software of choice. They may have had no formal training, and thus may be unfamiliar with the way channel inserts and effects sends, or aux sends, are traditionally used, especially in the big studios with big analog consoles. While there is no right or wrong way to do anything, and modern DAW software and computers have enough power to do almost anything you want, there are reasons why the more traditional methods of using inserts and sends were established.

This next part in the series will focus on several "studio standard" microphone choices and recording tips for electric guitars. Although there are a wide variety of digital amp simulators available today that allow you to plug your electric guitar in direct and get a wide range of sounds, there still is nothing quite like […]

Carrying on with the theme of popular microphone choices that many pros use for various instruments, this article will focus on various microphones commonly used to record acoustic guitars. The choice of microphones and placement for recording acoustic guitars can vary quite a bit depending on the style of the music and the role that […]