Archives for September 2018

TUTORIALS How To Recreate the 1960s Abbey Road Drum Sound

September 30, 2018 by Elaine Sy Leave a Comment

The innovative sounds pioneered by the engineers at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in the 1960s are still coveted by young musicians today. Here we’ll be looking at how to create the vintage Abbey Road drum sound, applying the same classic techniques.

Before we go through the methods, let’s take a look at some of the gear needed, including some faithful recreations of the original EMI equipment available, in both hardware and software formats. Assuming you have a lovely old 1960s drum kit to record, you’ll need a good bass drum mic, such as the AKG D112, a descendant of the AKG D20 originally used, as well as several all-purpose dynamic types.

Technique of the Week – Humanising Pianos

September 27, 2018 by Elaine Sy Leave a Comment

We all like to use a little bit, or even a lot, of quantizing when we work, however, certain instruments take to it far better than others. The piano will often find itself dealing with chordal content.

The net result of the quantization of a piano track, is that all of your notes will strike a heavy blow at the same time, which can be useful for certain styles of commercial music, but not if you’re trying to strike a note of expressiveness and/or subtlety. So if you need to use quantize but yearn to soften the potentially robotic-sounding-blow, dive into the Humanisation page of your DAW and add a little randomness to proceedings.

iZotope’s New RX 7 Makes Audio Repair Easier for Musicians

September 26, 2018 by Elaine Sy Leave a Comment

iZotope, Inc., the experts in intelligent audio technology, recently released updates to the RX family of audio repair and enhancement software. The seventh generation of RX builds on years of thorough research in digital signal processing and machine learning. Where RX 7 Advanced and the RX Post Production Suite focus on the needs of audio post professionals, RX 7 Standard and RX Elements deal with common (and uncommon) audio problems encountered by musicians.

The updates in version 7 represent the latest advances in iZotope’s assistive audio technology, helping musicians speed past mundane tasks so they can focus on creative work. Highlights include Repair Assistant, Music Rebalance, and Remove/Isolate Vocals. RX 7 Standard and RX Elements are now available at www.izotope.com/rx and select retailers.

Remove/Isolate Vocals

Free Tarabia Distortion VST/AU Plugin Released By Smaolab

September 25, 2018 by Elaine Sy Leave a Comment

Smaolab has announced the release of Tarabia Distortion, a freeware distortion effect in VST and AU plugin formats for compatible digital audio workstations on PC and Mac. Yay!

Tarabia Distortion is based on two different distortion algorithms. The first algorithm provides heavy overdrive while the second one is more mellow. The developer recommends Tarabia Distortion as a tool to intensify the software synthesizers, but the plugin will also work well on other types of audio such as drums or bass guitars. The plugin can be downloaded completely free of charge from the product page

"AudioPedia 106: Microphones" Is Everything Producers Need To Know About Mics

September 24, 2018 by Elaine Sy Leave a Comment

Microphones are a studio essential for almost every type of producer. With a wide selection of mics, expert producer Joe Albano shares the fundamentals of everything you need to know about microphones whether you’re an absolute beginner or just looking to polish your studio skills.

In this course which is broken into short videos of just a couple of minutes each, you begin by learning about the different types of microphones: transducer and then the many varieties of condenser mic, which is the type you’re most likely to encounter. Techniques such as close miking, multi miking and the proximity effect, plosives, polarity and more are also discussed.