Feature articles, lessons and tutorials on audio and music

Commonly used by electric guitar players, especially to liven things up, feedback is the worst enemy of acoustic musicians. In this series of articles we'll look into the solutions to play a relaxed …

Over the last 15 years, Eyal Levi has become a highly respected producer, engineer and musician in the world of metal music. He’s worked on 40 albums that have made it to the Billboard Top 200 chart,…

In part 1, we discussed what licensing is, and described how music libraries work. In this second and final part, we’ll look at the different ways you can make money from a licensed piece of music, t…

As we saw in the previous article of this series, if a waveform is recurrent, it is called a periodic wave. From a theoretical point of view, for example, musical notes are all based on a periodic wa…

One of the few avenues left where you can still make money from selling your music is through licensing. Although the market has become saturated over the last several years, there are still opportun…

Between the proliferation of home studios, digital music technology, the Internet, and the development of music genres that are programmed rather than played, the amount of session work available, as…

In the previous article we saw that sound is made of waves. Like many things in life, they can be simple or complex. You can't find an absolutely "pure" sound in nature. The closest to that is the s…

In today’s digitally dominated world of music gear, one way to tell how highly a guitar amp is regarded is whether it’s been emulated in major amp-modeling software packages. One of the amps you'll f…

With the right apps and accessories, an iPhone, an iPod touch and especially an iPad can be a real boon to your live performance setup. Your iDevice can function as a sound source, effects processo…

If you're a recording musician who doesn't play bass, creating realistic MIDI bass guitar parts can be a challenge. The tips and techniques offered in this article will help you put together authenti…

You may have heard Richard Devine’s distinctive electronic compositions, or seen his name on patch collections in various synths, but most likely when you hear his work it’s a system sound in a compu…

In part 1 we looked at different ways to setup your gear for an A/B comparison. This time, we’ll offer some suggestions for specific aspects to focus on during your referencing session.

Fans of alternate tunings (especially metalheads) will often find themselves with overcooked noodles instead of strings, compromising their sound. Here are a couple of recipes to make sure your strin…

Referencing your mix against an existing recording via the process known as “A/B-ing,” is a great way to check the quality of your work and help you overcome inaccurate studio acoustics. Here in part…

A well thought out setlist is critical to the success of your gig. Whether for a band or a solo singer, the order in which you play your songs could mean the difference between a good show and a grea…

This penultimate article in our series dedicated to mastering at home is surely the one you've all been waiting for. Indeed, today we will talk about a couple of tricks to get a really HUGE sound. Bu…

No matter what musical style you're into, if you own studio gear, you probably record vocals at least some of the time. So when we had a chance to tap into the expertise of Kris Crummett — a prominen…

Here in the final part of this 3-part article, I’ll finish scoring the hypothetical commercial, working with variables like tempo, start time, and meter, while never losing sight of the original assi…

In this antepenultimate installment, we'll discuss several points that you need to bear in mind to get an optimal final result, depending on how your music will be distributed.

Modeled amps and effects can be found in many applications, including outboard modeling processors, DAWs, dedicated computer plug-ins, and, now more than ever, iOS apps. Your iPad, iPhone or iPod tou…

The Shure SM57 arrived on the scene in 1965 and quickly became a fixture in the pro audio world. The versatile, solidly built, yet inexpensive dynamic mic is great for guitar cabinets, snare drums, h…

Audiofanzine met up with Ryan Loftus ─ engineer at Telefunken Eletroakustik ─ to talk about the high-end microphones the company manufactures.

If you've got three minutes to spare, check out this Audiofanzine video travelogue, and experience what it's like to attend the Summer NAMM show in Nashville.

To finish with the helping tools for mastering, in this installment we'll talk about the oscilloscope — very often underestimated by home studio owners — and a utilitarian plug-in, which, even if not…

Today we'll talk about a delicate — but very useful — subject, namely the firewalls that can help you avoid being yet another victim of the loudness war.