Feature articles, lessons and tutorials on audio and music

In the early 1960s, at the beginning of the British Invasion, the studio scene in England was thriving, but the British studios used different gear and got a very different sound than their U.S. coun…

Today we'll close the chapter on reverb with one last suggestion and a short list of plug-ins I personally like to use when working with sound spaces.

Sound is possible thanks to transduction, in other words, the transformation from one form of energy into another one.

Are you in a rut on your instrument? Do you feel like you’ve been playing the same old stuff forever without any significant improvement? If so, and if you’re willing to commit an hour or so a day to…

This time around, we'll look at two additional ways to substitute chords: Relative chord and tonal exchange substitutions. But before we do that, I want to complete the previous article and finish di…

This week we'll discuss a swaying technique which will allow you to easily create the illusion of lateral movement using reverb exclusively.

So far we have reviewed quite extensively the "classic" uses of reverb during mixdown, but I would now like to invite you to discover more exotic applications in the next couple of articles. These ar…

Did you know that John Lennon’s first guitar was a Gallotone Champion acoustic that he ordered from a catalog, or that George Harrison played a Framus Hootenanny 12-string on “Help," or that Ringo st…

Last time, we saw how to recreate a realistic sound space with the three last buses of the setup I suggested to use when working with reverb. This week we'll address the concept of depth in a sound s…

Musikmesse, the massive music trade show that takes place every year around this time in Frankfurt, Germany is the place for numerous new product introductions. The Audiofanzine crew was on the groun…

In this installment, we'll continue exploring chord substitutions with two new forms based on the dominant function.

In this new episode, I'll show you how to recreate a realistic sound space with the last three buses of the reverb setup we've been using in the last couple of weeks.

You could collect individual plug-ins that deliver the kinds of effects you use most; that’s one approach, and a popular one. Another is to use a single plug-in that offers lots of effects for sound …

In the previous two articles I took a brief detour from the somewhat theoretical tone of this series to show you some specific examples of harmonic chord progressions that are easy to understand and …

Today I'll focus on the sixth bus of my personal reverb mixing setup. As I told you before, this bus is aimed at producing the so-called "glue" effect. In other words, the more or less signal you sen…

Top mix engineers will tell you that they instinctively know when they're finished with a mix. But for those of us who haven’t reached that level yet, it’s usually hard to have that kind of certainty…

In the final installment of this three-part article, we’ll look at a few other key issues to consider when contemplating switching over to an in-ear monitor system.

In the previous article I introduced you to some of the most popular cadences and chord progressions. But there are still some left!

Today we'll follow up on the previous article by discussing the presets for five of the nine reverb buses of the template I proposed.

Even if DJs are turning more and more towards immaterial formats nowadays, it's still useful to keep a good old CD player lying around, one that can play back normal Red Book CDs as well as those sta…

In part 1, we talked about how in-ear monitors can benefit performing musicians, this time around, we'll look at some of the issues you'll face using an in-ear system.

We have been discussing reverb for quite some time now, although in a more or less theoretical way. I know it can get a bit frustrating but, trust me, it was necessary. Now that we are done with all …

Bands frequently run their stage monitors super loud in order to better hear themselves singing. But in the process, they're not only increasing stage volume to unbearable levels, they're also sabota…

In the last article, we saw how chords have a natural tendency towards other chords depending on their degree in the key of the song where they are currently been employed.

Today I'll close the brief parenthesis I opened last week. And I'll do that tackling a notion that is crucial when it comes to mixing, namely...