Music Software guides & articles

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…

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…

UltraChannel is more than just your average channel strip. It also features Eventide's signature delay and modulation effects, and is almost like an entire effects collection in a single plug-in. Rea…

Amplion Pro 1.1 is the latest version of this amp-and-effects modeling software from Audiffex. Can it hold its own with stiff competition in the modeling software field?

In part 1 of this article, we looked at preference settings and key commands. Here in part 2, the focus will be on the Smart Tool, some important timeline options, and how to create customized sessio…

Avid Pro Tools features industry standard audio recording, editing, and mixing, along with a reasonably well-featured MIDI section. But with an application this powerful, getting up to speed can take…

Talk about multi-talented: L.A.-based Carmen Rizzo is a two-time Grammy-nominated producer/artist/electronic musician and composer whose credits include Seal, Coldplay, Paul Oakenfold and Ryuichi Sak…

This week we will tackle a landmark in the mastering chain — the limiter.

The quality and variety of synthesizers available for your iOS device just keeps getting better and better. Although many of the top, name-brand synths will cost you in the range of $20 or even more,…

Before moving on to the next processor in the mastering chain — the limiter/maximizer — it's appropriate to talk about a topic often overlooked by many people learning to master: Automation.

In this new installment of our article series dedicated to mastering at home, we will delve into the world of mid-side processing.

Much as we try to avoid it, there are occasions when noise gets onto our recordings. It could be a live recording where the source was too quiet and background hiss was picked up, or a passage on ele…

Capo 3 software for Mac ($29.99 via the App Store), from the awesomely named software developer, SuperMegaUltraGroovy, is marketed with the slogan “Reverse Engineering Rock and Roll,” and, indeed, it…

Guitars, vocals, pianos, drums or virtually any track in your mix, has extraneous low-frequency information that can be filtered out without compromising the sound. While you may not notice anything …

Toontrack recently released a new collection of amp models with effects called the Classic Amps EZmix Pack, which can be opened as presets in the company's EZmix 2 software. How do these emulations s…

Almost a year after releasing the free Little MicroShift, SoundToys has finally introduced its bigger sibling, a plug-in designed to add space and depth to a wide variety of sources. MicroShift is al…

Sharing tracks over the Internet makes it possible for musicians to work together remotely, whether they're around the corner from each other or around the world.

If you’re not a drummer, but you need drum tracks for your productions — and assuming you don’t have the budget and facilities to hire and record a real drummer — you’re going to need to use either M…

Eight years after releasing the first EZdrummer, Toontrack introduces version 2, which gently revolutionizes the virtual drum market. Far from trying to grow in terms of gigabytes, EZdrummer bets on …

The partnership between artist BT and iZotope has resulted in a new plug-in, the BreakTweaker. Is it just another drum machine or a more advanced tool than it seems?

As you probably have already noticed, tape saturation is really hip right now. Although already having plug-ins in the same genre, a leading publisher like Waves couldn't simply ignore the current fr…

Since its inception, the plug-in family for Universal Audio UAD cards has been devoted to the reproduction of analog units. And that's how UA has come to being associated with the biggest names in th…

The year has just begun and, as usual, the new Sonar has arrived with a bunch of new features on the rack.

While it's true that staff paper sheets and notebooks haven't disappeared yet, we must also admit that computers have made the task of composers and songwriters simpler by giving them the possibility…

SKnote, Valhalla DSP, Sonimus… Over the last years, the plug-in world has seen the birth of many "small" independent developers who offer some damn good products.