Struggling with harsh or even ear-piercing cymbals? What about a snare with too much ring that you just can’t seem to isolate? Then there are the guitars that don’t have enough bite to break through the mix…
How do you start writing a new song? For some, it all starts with the melody. I know guys who will flesh out entire tracks as instrumentals before ever approaching the lyrics.
Call it an echo or a delay, every musician, producer, mixer, and listener knows what it is. What they don’t all know is how to use them properly, what situation calls for what type of delay, and most will even struggle to understand how a tape delay differs from a digital delay.
Recording guitars for a demo can be a tedious task. For a lot of us, we know these demo guitar tracks aren’t going anywhere near the final mix. If you’re tracking guitars live for a demo session, you’re much more likely to set up a mic quickly – looking for a “good” tone, but not really dialing it in perfectly.
We’ve gone into how to use impulse responses in your mixes before, but we haven’t done a deep dive into what makes a good impulse response (and why it matters so much).
When you think of a guitar solo, it’s rarely some anemic-sounding acoustic guitar poking through your mix. It’s a rambunctious, overtly in-your-face behemoth of a guitar, tearing through your headphones or speakers.
Amp sims are an integral part of our workflow, and very obviously a huge part of what JST offers as part of our plugin collection. Not all amp sims are made equal though, and there are some major issues with amp sims, especially when it comes to processing power.
Tape machines are fickle, hard-to-control, antiquated pieces of music history that would happily collect dust and dirt in an attic if we let them. They’re a pain to maintain and parts are fewer and far between.
Since we’re audio engineers, we’re trained to listen closer than most other people do, and this critical listening is imperative when cleaning up unwanted audio in videos. It’s nearly impossible to account for the sound in your surroundings when filming on-site, so a lot of the time some post-production will be necessary.
If your vocals sound good but they’re struggling for clarity in the mix, there are dozens of options at your disposal to give them more presence. The most common option is to turn them up, but that’s not ideal for every situation, especially on a more dynamic vocal track.