Elaine Sy

Sound Design Tricks: Using Finger Mics

March 11, 2019 by Elaine Sy Leave a Comment

Designing your own sounds can be the key to getting your own signature style of production, but it’s not always easy to get started. Sound designer Diego Stocco demonstrates in a video below an ingenious technique he came up with of using microphones attached to his fingers to capture sound in a unique way.

Although initially conceived as a way to record quiet sounds out in nature, Diego shows how this technique can be translated to the studio to get some amazing results. You’ll see how he gets ethereal and captivating sounds by moving around to dynamically capture different textures and tones.

Limiter vs Compressor: What You Need to Know (Easy)

March 10, 2019 by Elaine Sy Leave a Comment

Trying to figure out the difference between a limiter and a compressor? You’re not alone. It takes most producers a long time before they ever understand which is which. But using the right tool at the right time can save you from a mix disaster.

The compressor won’t reduce the volume of your signal until it reaches the threshold you set. Threshold determines when the compressor starts working. Here you dial in how loud the sound has to be before the compressor kicks in. A limiter’s threshold works a little differently from a compressor’s. A limiter won’t let the sound get any louder than the threshold.

Read more about this here: https://www.musicianonamission.com/limiter-vs-compressor/

8 Top Freeware Vocal Plug-ins – Cher and Share Alike

March 7, 2019 by Elaine Sy Leave a Comment

Want to vocode your voice, or simply keep it in tune? It can be done for free. Well, these eight eclectic freeware vocal plug-ins might make you change your tune.

We could, and probably should include a Melda plug-in with every freeware roundup. If you haven’t already, download the company’s excellent MfreeFXBundle freeware bundle which contains no less than 32 freeware plug-ins – everything from noise generators to filters – and includes this rather great MAutoPitch pitch corrector. It’s an automatic pitch-correction plug-in designed for vocals in the Auto-Tune vein.

Roland's TR-8S mashes all your favorite 80s drum machines together

March 7, 2019 by Elaine Sy Leave a Comment

In the 80s, Roland drum machines were at the epicenter of hip hop, house, techno, and other music genres. But if you wanted to pick up any vintage drum today, you’d probably end up dropping thousands of dollars. Fortunately, Roland just made getting all those vintage drums sound a lot easier and cheaper.

The successor to the Aira TR-8 introduced four years ago, takes what the company learned from that drum machine. They fine-tuned it into a more capable and feature-rich drum machine that’s ready to mix and mash all those genres with a just a few twists and button pushes.

Read more about this here: https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/05/rolands-tr-8s-hands-on/

The 6 dB of Headroom for Mastering Myth Explained

March 6, 2019 by Elaine Sy Leave a Comment

It’s my belief that the suggestion of having your peaks at -3 dB or -6 dB dates back to the early days of digital audio when mixes were captured on a digital audio tape or on an Alesis MasterLink two-track recorder, for example. You had to be careful not to clip the input which could easily sound bad.

Digital audio has advanced by leaps and bounds since those days so putting too much thought and effort into peaking at -6 dB or -3 dB in your DAW is more or less of a waste of time. It’s essentially all the same.