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Understanding EQ
Pin It EQ & Frequency Maintaining Perspective The goal of EQ’ing is to create a cohesive mix with clarity and power, and the hardest part about this is maintaining a useful and unbiased viewpoint while equalizing individual instruments. Our brains are very efficient at coping with and adapting to a barrage of changing frequencies (especially while sweeping through them). The effect is a desensitization and dulling of our senses. The trick here is not to sweep your EQ’s while looking for specific frequencies. For each...
read moreUnderstanding Compression
Pin It Compression… the route of all audio evil or the standard for pro-recordings… The main question here is how much dynamic expression do you want in your music? Who is your music for? Recording is about capturing a performance, and a good player will give an expressive, dynamic, and energetic performance, but sometimes in the context of recording and mixing in with other instruments, this is not what the song “needs”. Compression allows us to control the dynamics of a mix. In other words, it reduces the gap between the...
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Drum Core Review
Pin It DrumCore v3 from Submersible Music gives songwriters and composers a whole set of tools for producing professional-sounding drum tracks with grooves and samples by some of the best drummers (including Matt Sorum, Sly Dunbar, Lonnie Wilson and many others) across a variety of styles. Drumcore is pretty easy to use, however, competing products like BFD2 provide additional control when it comes to editing, tuning of each individual drum, and the “placement” of microphones. Similar to products like EZDrummer, Drumcore seeks...
read moreSuperior Drummer 2.0 Review
Pin It Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0 “The New York Studio Legacy Series” is a total renovation of the previous Superior engine. The Toontrack devlopers applied the same attention to detail and musicality as with the original version. Superior Drummer 2.0 was re-worked for improved use with e-drums with increased efficient utilization of sample layers and better loading times. It offers MIDI tracks played by Nir Z which can be found in its new MIDI engine and arranger, EZplayer Pro, and ca also function in standalone mode...
read moreEZ Drummer Drum Review
Pin It EZdrummer was developed to provide you with the best possible drum-sample quality in a small, inexpensive plug-in format that’s really easy to setup. With Toontrack’s EZdrummer, you can easily drag-and-drop audition samples and build drum kits recorded with multi-microphone configurations. You additionally get a mixer window which allows stereo and multi-track routing into your host sequencer through a plug-in and contains presets for fast mix types and speedy sample switching. With the second-generation...
read moreHacks for your Midi Drum Tracks Ep. 2 – Comping
Pin It In this episode I go over key commands, how to make better (faster) comping decisions, and how to comp midi tracks with logic.
read moreHacks for your Midi Drum Tracks Ep. 1 – Setup & Workflow
Pin It In this episode I go over setup, workflow, a couple things about BFD and some of the advantages of using midi drums.
read moreRecording E-Drums – Myths and Black Holes
Pin It One thing I’ve grown increasingly interested in over the years is recording using electronic drums. There still seems to be a bit of a taboo about recording with this type of instrument. I’ve asked many engineers their opinions on it and skepticism seems to be the common response. Among some of the common myths about electronic drum recording: Dynamics aren’t as varied as a real kit. The machine gun effect is unavoidable. They sound unnatural and robotic. The highhat and cymbals never sounds real. Flams and...
read morePredictions for the Future of Audio
Pin It I just watched an excellent movie called Transcendent Man by Ray Kurzweil, and wow. This man has some incredible insights into the future. In the movie, which is based off his book The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence Ray goes into detail about the rate of exponential change in our near future. He talks about nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, merging biological systems with technology, and the possibility that we may live forever. It sounds pretty fantastical, but I encourage...
read moreSelf Assessment: how to get an objective view of your own abilities
Pin It I think before we get into any discussions about gear, recording techniques, and the like, it might be a good idea to do a little self-assessment to get an idea of what internal problems you can fix before you move on to the external. A lot of the problems I see with artists seems to be with ego, goal-setting, and competition. Actually, those seem to be general human problems. But having been guilty of the worst of it and having scraped myself out of it, I think I have a few nuggets of advice. 1. Ego. Learn how to take criticism....
read moreWelcome to Learn How To Record Website!
Pin It Hello! Thanks for checking out the blog. So, who the hell am I and why have I decided to start a blog about recording? Well, my name is Mike Gilliland. I’m from Vancouver BC Canada. I have a passion for music, recording, and audio production. I would say I’m pretty decent at it, but I’m always striving to get better. One thing I do better than recording is networking. So, I’m going to share some my connections with the old farts of the music industry with you, and give you some insights into how...
read moreAbout Mike
I am a Recording Engineer, Producer, Blogger, Drummer, and No-Pants-Partier. I enjoy pushing faders (virtual or real), travelling, listening to new music, and teaching people how to hack. GuruMixReview.com
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