Kick Start Your Playing Skills - A practical approach to improving your instrumental abilities — quickly!
LearningAre you in a rut on your instrument? Do you feel like you’ve been playing the same old stuff forever without any significant improvement? If so, and if you’re willing to commit an hour or so a day to…
Relative Chord and Tonal Exchange Substitutions - Harmony Basics - Part 16
LearningThis time around, we'll look at two additional ways to substitute chords: Relative chord and tonal exchange substitutions. But before we do that, I want to complete the previous article and finish di…
Lateral Movement with Reverb - A guide to mixing music - Part 84
LearningThis week we'll discuss a swaying technique which will allow you to easily create the illusion of lateral movement using reverb exclusively.
Responsive Reverb - A guide to mixing music - Part 83
LearningSo far we have reviewed quite extensively the "classic" uses of reverb during mixdown, but I would now like to invite you to discover more exotic applications in the next couple of articles. These ar…
Unreal Soundscapes - A guide to mixing music - Part 82
LearningLast time, we saw how to recreate a realistic sound space with the three last buses of the setup I suggested to use when working with reverb. This week we'll address the concept of depth in a sound s…
Tritone Substitution and Secondary Dominants - Harmony Basics - Part 15
LearningIn this installment, we'll continue exploring chord substitutions with two new forms based on the dominant function.
How to Adjust Depth with Reverb - A guide to mixing music - Part 81
LearningIn this new episode, I'll show you how to recreate a realistic sound space with the last three buses of the reverb setup we've been using in the last couple of weeks.
Chord Substitutions - Harmony Basics - Part 14
LearningIn the previous two articles I took a brief detour from the somewhat theoretical tone of this series to show you some specific examples of harmonic chord progressions that are easy to understand and …
Glue It Down with Reverb - A guide to mixing music - Part 80
LearningToday I'll focus on the sixth bus of my personal reverb mixing setup. As I told you before, this bus is aimed at producing the so-called "glue" effect. In other words, the more or less signal you sen…
How to Know When Your Mix is Finished - 5 questions to ask yourself to determine if your mix is ready to go
LearningTop mix engineers will tell you that they instinctively know when they're finished with a mix. But for those of us who haven’t reached that level yet, it’s usually hard to have that kind of certainty…
More Chord Progressions - Harmony Basics - Part 13
LearningIn the previous article I introduced you to some of the most popular cadences and chord progressions. But there are still some left!
Choosing Reverb Sounds - A guide to mixing music - Part 79
LearningToday we'll follow up on the previous article by discussing the presets for five of the nine reverb buses of the template I proposed.
The Best DJ CD Decks for Around $500 - The top budget CD decks for DJs
LearningEven if DJs are turning more and more towards immaterial formats nowadays, it's still useful to keep a good old CD player lying around, one that can play back normal Red Book CDs as well as those sta…
Getting Down to Work with Reverb - A guide to mixing music - Part 78
LearningWe have been discussing reverb for quite some time now, although in a more or less theoretical way. I know it can get a bit frustrating but, trust me, it was necessary. Now that we are done with all …
The Ears Have It! (part 1) - Improve your band’s onstage sound with in-ear monitors
LearningBands frequently run their stage monitors super loud in order to better hear themselves singing. But in the process, they're not only increasing stage volume to unbearable levels, they're also sabota…
