Feature articles, lessons and tutorials on audio and music

In this fourth part you'll learn how to fine-tune the cue mix for the singer by improving the ordinary in no time.

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Last time we started exploring the tetrachords of the altered modes in general and the synthetic scales created from the tetrachords of the melodic minor scale in particular. You saw that apart from the tetrachords of the natural modes, altered modes provide a whole new range of "building bricks": the diminished, harmonic, Lydian #2 and minor #4 t…

After the brief detour last week to discuss a less conventional way to handle the cue mix, today we'll go back to the more traditional way, that is the use of a good ol' pair of headphones. We'll discuss a method that will allow you to provide the singer a perfect cue mix while at the same time help you set the recording levels.

After having reviewed in our last article the synthetic scales resulting from the taking apart of natural modes and the redistribution of their tetrachords, let's see what you get when you do the same with altered modes.

Last week I mentioned the preposterous idea of using a speaker instead of headphones to send the cue mix to the singer. This obviously entails the mic picking up a lot of bleed, however as I implied back then, you can minimize this horrible crosstalk to make it acceptable. Lets see how...!

In the previous article I introduced synthetic scales, which made us dig up an element of scales and modes which we had already touched upon before: tetrachords. So before we move on I think it's important to highlight the interest of splitting scales and modes into tetrachords and then put them back together.

Today's article could've been easily included in the previous section because we are once again dealing with the comfort of the singer. However, I decided to make it part of a new, much larger section dedicated to the handling of headphone mixes when recording vocals. Let's go!

Last time I told you we would discover a couple of somewhat particular scales: the harmonic major and double harmonic major scales. But they belong to a larger group called synthetic scales, which I think we should discuss before we move into these two specific cases.

Third and final installment of the chapter dedicated to the comfort of the singer during vocal recordings. Today, for the first time, we will discuss the gear used. However, before looking at it from a technical point of view, I think it's better to linger a bit on the practical side of things from the viewpoint of the performer, so that he/she ca…