Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of Simon J. Campbell February 7, 2011 - As you may have noticed, my posting hasn't been as regular as usual. In fact, I haven't even had a chance to check out the changes that were completed last week on the collaboration project! There are some pretty big changes happening in my life right now, and some of it is music related. Even though I'm easing back into a music schedule, it's hard to find time to actually write. Finding an appropriate ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Lollyman December 9, 2010 - Ok, we are a go! Participation for this project is closed, and I've sent out invitations to the Dropbox account to everyone who showed interest. If you missed out on this project, we'll get you on the next one. Hopefully this will all work out awesome, and will be the start of a cool collaborative community. First off, I want to really thank you guys for your enthusiasm. I started this site a couple years ago, ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Dave Conner November 18th, 2010 - So several of you have expressed interest in the collaboration project, and those that I have contact info for through your comments have been added to the shared DropBox folder. If anyone else wants to be part of the project, please comment on this post and enter your contact info in the form (email addresses won't be shown publicly). Also, please tell everyone about this project as the more people we have, the better ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Roomic Cube November 13, 2010 - We've all been there fleshing out a track and thinking "Oh this is the chorus"; Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V. It happens in every genre, but especially to independent producers who do everything themselves. After all, if we want another chorus, we just need to clone another one and maybe add some new stuff on top right? Wrong. Have you ever finished your production and it sounded a little flat. With stellar mixing and careful production, why doesn't ... Read More

November 11, 2010 - When I first started working with Logic, I immediately maxed out its processing power on my laptop within the first 5 minutes. In the time since then, I've done full 36 track mixes with effects, and mixed my own complete productions; all of this involved eking out as much processing and hard drive performance as I could from my laptop. One of the problems with Apple is that upgrading your machine (in terms of processors) just doesn't happen. ... Read More

November 3rd, 2010 - I'm sure you've all heard that Protools, along with going native, now has an SE version that ships with either a USB microphone, an interface similar to the Mbox mini, or a MIDI keyboard. You may also have heard that you don't have to go to your local Guitar Center to buy one either; you can get them at Best Buy. Power users may scoff at the baby Protools (after all it has a maximum of 16 tracks) however ... Read More

November 1st, 2010 - It seems the majority of remix contests out there are for Americans-only, but this time I have one just for those in the UK. Audio-Technica has a contest going on for interesting takes on classic Christmas carols. It's open to all categories of music, from DJ's to indie bands. The winner will receive £500 with five runners-up winning £100 worth of Audio-Technica equipment. The first 100 will also get £30 Audio-Technica headphones. Fire up your webcams and post up ... Read More

Photo courtesy of Dave Conner October 28, 2010 - Sorry for the post hiatus, I was quite busy getting engaged (yay!). Today I want to talk a bit about songwriting with other songwriters. A couple nights ago, I had the opportunity to attend a small songwriting session with two likeminded individuals. As a guy who mostly sits in his studio, writing solo, it was inspiring. Joe Gilder has talked about just getting the song done, but I'm a super procrastinator and it's pretty ... Read More

October 17th, 2010 - Imagine you're a mix engineer and you get a song to mix recorded by another engineer. Unfortunately, it has a lot of noise: hissing, pops, background noise. When there's something playing on that track, for example the vocalist is singing, you can barely hear the noise, but if the singer isn't singing constantly, you can hear it. Perhaps it will be hidden by other instruments that play during those gaps, but when you're trying to do the best ... Read More

October 1st, 2010 - Today I want to talk a bit about when to make edits, and when to warp audio tracks. While there are some artists that are vehemently opposed to any editing of their performance, most want you as an engineer to make them sound as good as possible. In many cases, this will include fixing little timing issues. Sometimes you won't be able to re-record a performance (time is money after all), so you will need to make changes ... Read More