Feature articles and reviews on audio and music

If you are like most guitarists, you are on a continual quest to improve your tone and/or discover additional tonal options. This can involve spending thousands of dollars on amps, guitars, pickups, speakers, and effects. But what would you say if I told you could alter your tone for pennies?

Now that we've seen the basic usage of compression when mixing, I'll walk you through a couple of tips and tricks that I'm sure you'll find quite useful. This week we'll look into a technique that might seem very simple at first glance, but it isn't: Serial Compression.

“For me, the most important part is for the music to sound alive and to have good energy," says producer/engineer Reuven Amiel, "and I always base the mix on that. No matter what type of music it is, I want energy.

The tale begins in Winter 1951.

If you’re skilled on your instrument or have developed strong mixing or other engineering skills, you may find yourself offered freelance work at some point. When that happens, it’s important to know what to ask for, how to structure the job so you’re not overworked, and how to deal with the logistics of payment.

Imagine a MIDI-controller keyboard that lets you seamlessly switch between virtual instruments from different manufacturers, keeps all your patches together in a single browser, and automatically maps controller information to its knobs and switches.

Today, I invite you to continue exploring the possibilities of dynamics processing at the microdynamic level. After having dealt with "punchy" sounds, we'll use dynamics to go for the opposite — "roundness."

In this new installment we'll continue discussing the consequences of volume on music, sound and human ears, and we'll see how digital technology has enabled the reduction of dynamic range in recorded music.

As a guitar player, you have many possible roles in a live situation. You might strictly be a rhythm player, you might also play lead, or you could even be the front person for the band, in addition to your guitar duties. But whatever your function is is, paying attention to the concepts discussed in this story will help you be more successful as …

After looking at some applications of compression at the macrodynamic level in the two previous articles, we'll deal here with microdynamics, starting with how to get a "punchy" sound.