Feature articles and reviews on audio and music

Fuzzzzz! This onomatopoeia used to describe the first distorted sounds of an amp is hardly a stranger to any guitar player. The fuzz is obviously a distortion effect, but it's a also a culture in its…

In the previous articles we dealt basically with dissonances and consonances and how they alternate following the different harmonic motions.

David Tolomei is one of the top mix engineers and producers on the indie and underground scenes. He cut his teeth as an assistant at New York's Avatar studios, which, at the time, was one of the most…

In this new episode dedicated to recording bass guitar, we'll deal with a somewhat thorny issue: should you record the bass with or without effects?

Every guitarist needs strings, and lots of them, so choosing the right type is important. Despite their seeming simplicity, these metallic threads can guarantee tuning stability, long-term durability…

Welcome to today's article, where we will keep on discussing motion in the harmonic domain. Last time we talked about suspension, so today we'll talk about its flip side: anticipation and its very cl…

Okay, now that we've settled once and for all the question of phase correlation, the time has come to mix our bass tracks.

Sometimes you need a couple of big speakers, but can't necessarily afford them. Don't panic! There are some speakers with an 8-inch woofer that can manage the low end quite decently without setting y…

It's sometimes hard to believe the similarities between real-life events and music. You could say that when you are late or early in life, you are not in sync with your environment. Well it's similar…

I guess some of you are a bit unhappy about how I closed the last installment. And you probably won't like me any better when you realize that the first paragraph still doesn't dive into the topic I …

The results of our survey on the sequencers most used by the AF community seems to have drawn quite some attention among you. So we've decided to share with you another one we ran on electric guitars…

In the previous article you saw how a resolution can be regular or... irregular. And it's precisely the latter that we will start exploring today. By doing this you will be able to observe, once agai…

Up to now, we've recorded a bass line in two different ways: directly from the instrument and via one or several mics placed in front of a bass amp. As you were able to hear, each of these methods ha…

Three decades have gone by since computers revolutionized music production. And the pace of the market is so high that a timeline of the different DAWs and sequencers that have come and gone througho…

Audio sequencers never stop evolving. Household names strive to introduce new features without losing their essence while, on the other hand, you have new players who want to join the race betting st…

In the previous article you saw how the different voices of a chord evolved to get to another chord, following a very specific voice leading procedure, which is called a "forced" motion. And that's w…

In the previous article, you saw how to direct record an electric bass. Although such recordings can be pretty good, they have a major drawback: lack of body. This can be a real problem when the prod…

Have you just finished recording and editing the tracks of your masterpieces? That's great news! But you still have quite some work left to do before your songs are ready to be listened by other huma…

In the last article, we saw consonances and dissonances according to our Western point of view, as well as the alternation that governs their use. In the present article you will see how to lead thes…

After two articles dealing with the pre-requisites for any bass recording worthy of the name, today we will dive into the heart of the matter with the direct recording of a bass guitar.

The time has come to put an end to this series of articles dedicated to the art of mixing. In this installment, which is unlike any other so far for obvious reasons, I invite you to take a look behin…

In the first installment of this chapter dedicated to the recording of bass guitar, you saw the impact the instrument itself can have on the overall result. But there's much more to consider before p…

For this penultimate episode, I will show you some tricks that might end up disrupting your daily routine and spicing up your mixes. This article is obviously addressed to people having already some …

After the chapter dedicated to drums, it seems natural to continue with the second most important element of groove: the bass guitar. To begin this section I would really like to stress a notion I've…

Today I ask you to join me in this somewhat particular article where I'll discuss something that's a bit off topic but you nevertheless ought to always bear in mind: accidents in the context of music…