I just recorded a 1-man-band cover of the song, That Thing You Do, (written by Adam Schlesinger for the movie of the same name) from scratch on my computer-based home recording studio right here in a spare bedroom. The reason I did it, besides just loving the song and always wanting to, was to demonstrate what kind [...]
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I just read this question: What does mastering a song mean? That’s a great question, actually. Here’s the answer: nobody knows. Nobody, that is, but a small and exclusive cabal whose members are sworn to keep the sacred arts a secret until their dying days. Well that’s what it feels like to me sometimes. Interviews [...]
The term voice recording software, especially in the context of recording voice overs, is actually sort of a misleading term. That’s because pretty much any software that is designed for recording on a computer is going to be just as capable of recording the human voice as any other audio. So the real question, becomes [...]
EQ…That Thing You Never Knew Quite How To Use Have you ever seen one of these things? They used to be common in “entertainment systems.” Right along with your CD Player, Cassette Player, Record Player, amplifier, and “tuner” (meaning…”radio”), would be this other big boxy thing with nothing but a row like 30 vertical (meaning [...]
I’ll bet you didn’t know that your ears are lying to you. Oh yes. They only let us hear a small range of sound, the stuff between 20 and 20-thousand cycles per second (or “hertz”..a kilohertz is a 1000 of those cycles, usually abbreviated “KHz”). So there are lots of sounds out there you can’t [...]
One really excellent way to learn to record music is to study what the pros are doing. By breaking down a popular song and analyzing the parts and how everything fits together, you can learn an amazing amount about music production and recording. If you can then manage to re-create the song from scratch, you [...]
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Quiztones – http://quiztones.net/ has released an awesome iPhone app to help train your ears to recognize different audio frequencies.
Making sure your audio can be heard easily and clearly is important. One of the best audio editing tools available to us is called compression. With a compressor, we can even out the volume of certain tracks in our recordings, or even the entire mix. One primary reason for this is to prevent the listener [...]
Recording acoustic guitar, along with some voices and other instruments, is one of the most common home recording activities out there. Today I thought I’d describe the techniques I use when recording this type of music. If you’d like to get an idea of how my recordings sound (pretty-much all acoustic/folk/singer-songwriter type music), you can [...]
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PC recording software comes in many different types and capabilities. What I want to focus on here is software you can use to record music or voice overs onto your computer. That narrows it down to two categories of audio recording software: programs to use for “tracking” or getting the sound into the computer, and [...]
