Feature articles, lessons and tutorials on audio and music

As the dust is settling in Anaheim, and the post-buzz is gathering wind, us here at Audiofanzine present to you our Top 11 gear picks from NAMM 2010. Why 11? Well, it's one louder isn't it?

No matter what you test or measure, a considerable part of the sound of the show is controlled by environmental factors that are constantly changing. Knowing what they are is the first step toward be…

The idea behind Zimbalam is very simple: publish your songs in 20 online shops in 240 countries for a fixed rate under a non-exclusive distribution agreement.

Innovators, geek tricksters, obsessive-perfectionists, un-serious, electronic-rock geniuses? Time will tell, yet The Legend of the Black Shawarma, Infected Mushroom’s 7th album release will certainly…

Everybody knows how to change strings on an electric guitar. Elementary, no? Still it's an entirely different task when it comes to changing strings properly on different types of bridges.

In the age of digital music distribution, with its endless channels and intricacies, it can be a daunting task for independent artists to try to navigate through all the requirements of each digital…

Despite the preponderance of exceptional drum samples and loops on the market, for certain genres of music (notably country and rock) there is no substitute for a great session drummer playing on a w…

We've already dealt with drums and guitar, now it's time for the bass...

After having detailed how he records drums, Michael Wagener tackled guitars in this episode.

After explaining how he mics up drums, Michael Wagener now talks more about ribbon microphones, which he considers much less understood than their condenser or dynamic counterparts.

Recording is an art and often a matter of experience, and so what better way of gaining some understanding of what's involved than by listening to the prestigious American engineer Michael Wagener ta…

As an engineer/producer, one of my biggest early challenges was getting my mixes to sound as polished and balanced as the mixes of songs on my favorite albums. Living in Nashville, I knew the problem…

Sound is a wave, much like the ripples on a still body of water when a rock is dropped into it. The larger the wave, the lower the tone. Lower tones, known as bass frequencies, travel in wide long w…

Nothing will work without electricity unless you're jamming at the local drum circles down on the beach. Electrical installation studio power is often overlooked. Studios will setup a “clean feed”…

The magic of the recording studio has often mystified even the most seasoned professionals. With all the knobs, switches and buttons on various gear and large format consoles, no wonder confusion set…

In today's high definition world, we want the best quality in every film, picture, and sound we encounter. Blu-Ray DVD's seem poised to take over the market, pushing the inferior DVD's down the sa…

Before you’re ready for arenas and stadiums, where you’d no doubt call on the services of an experienced sound technician, you need to rehearse. And as long as you’re rehearsing you might as well do …

The aim of this article is to serve as a simple and straightforward introduction, or re-introduction, to the wonderful, but sometimes confusing world of modes.

OK, here we go! This is the first of our comparative software tests on time-stretching and pitch-shifting. The competitors: 26 Mac and PC programs, from big sequencers to small applications, plug-ins…

When we hear sounds in the “real world,” they are in an acoustic space. For example, suppose you are playing acoustic guitar in your living room. You hear not only the guitar’s sound, but because the…

It's never too late to learn how to read music, and with a little practice and tenacity, the basics can be learned quite quickly. And because knowing how to read and write music still has its benefit…

With stopwatch in hand, our perception of time seems straightforward. But in everyday life we’re not always watching the clock, and everyone knows that the passage of time is relative. It differs fro…

Long the role of the professional sound engineer, choosing the appropriate microphone has now become, with the proliferation of the home studio, the task of the amateur and even the beginner. This ch…

Many sound cards and synthesizers, as well as most audio software, are compatible with one of the three midi norms (GM, GS, XG). Though MIDI has long since proven its utility, the existence of differ…

In part I we gave a "physical" definition for timbre. We stressed its "plural" aspect and discussed the elements which make it up and define it. Above all we discussed the infinite number of possible…