THE LINK LIST: I am a musician. I make music. Capturing a quality recording and having it on cd is an art all by itself. Many musicians find themselves frustrated trying to get ideas from the brain onto cd. There is a massive amount of information that can help you on the internet. Some of it is true, some of it is well intended, and some of it is misleading or false. This is a list of what i consider (as a non-professional musician) to be true and important information. Sometimes tweaking the buffer on your DAW, trying to get the LFO on your synth just right, choosing the right mic (and right mic placement, and right mic pre amp and right D/A converter and right acoustic treatment.....), or routing busses and sends can all whittle away at the inspiration and energy needed for PLAYING MUSIC AND WRITING SONGS. So let me clarify: this page is not for up and coming mixing and mastering engineers or folks who aspire to be one. This page was made for MUSICIANS that are forced to record, mix, and master their own work due to low budgets and high standards for quality. This page will not lay it out, step by step, from hot distorted hard clipped mp3 file to gleaming shiny mastered cut. BUT if your a passionate musician in search of helpful information and places you can start educating YOURSELF on how to do those things, then scroll through my page.
COMPREHENSIVE HELP: these sites have info on EVERYTHING. I have spent hours on these sites. I garentee your question is answered somewhere in these sites below.
http://www.tweakheadz.com/guide.htm
http://emusician.com/
http://www.gearslutz.com/
http://www.audioneeds.com/forums/
http://www.soundonsound.com/information/Glossary.php
http://www.homerecordingconnection.com/
http://www.audiorecording.me/
http://www.modernbeats.com/hit-talk/
COPYRIGHTING: copyrights, murky waters.
http://www.copyright.gov/
COMPRESSION BASICS: Is the bass line making your speakers blow but when you turn it down, you can't even hear it barely? Did you record your drums onto seperate tracks and now it sounds like their are 5 drummers in the band? do your vocals sound strong leading up to the chorus but weak on their way into the verse? You could benefit from a compressor BUT you could also ruin your sound. Their is an entire culture surounding compression complete with trends, and beleif systems on how it should and should not be used. For more info on that, refer to the loudness war links, but for now just familiarize yourself with what they do and what amount of control you have over them. Also, speaking of familiarize: never use effects/plug ins that end with the suffix "ize", "izer", or "izing". Instead, learn what processing goes into creating that effect and stage yourself a signal path like it. You will learn pretty much all effects are either one or a combination of: eq, compression, delay based or gain based effects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression
http://www.audiorecording.me/audio-compression-tips-for-mixing.html
http://www.vestmanmastering.com/compression.html
EQ BASICS: Many effects are just forms of EQ, whether its for filtering out the pop from an aggressive vocalist or adding punch to a snare drum by boosting the 250 hertz band a little, there are an unlimited amount of uses for EQ. You should start now developing an integrated understanding of how these work and how you can control them.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/638389/eq_mastering_audio_tips.html?cat=33
http://www.hometracked.com/2008/02/07/vocal-eq-tips/
http://www.har-bal.com/index.php?/frequency-chart.php
http://www.recordingwebsite.com/articles/eqprimer.php
LOSE AN OWNERS MANUAL?:Owners manuals are like porn to audio heads. Besides being arousing, they are very informative and can solve 90% of your problems. They may even inspire you. Most of all though, one place you can save money is by knowing your equipment on an intimate level rather than buying one more peice of equipment to serve a single purpose that most likely could have been served some other way. The reasons are endless, take a look in your owners manual.
http://www.manualsonline.com/
ROOM ACOUSTICS: Your room can imprint every recording you make, sometimes you may like the effect such as an acoustic guitar in a big room can sound great but put drums in that same room and they sound like junk. Also when it comes to mixing your music, the room can make it very hard to perceive what volume certain frequencies are truelly playing at, turning the mixing process into an endless cycle of you burning cd's, finding out they don't sound right in your car, and then remixing only to repeat the process. Even a vague knowledge of acoustic science can help when faced with mic placement decisions or critical mixing decisions. Sound proofing is not the goal. The goal is an even and short lived reverberation acheived through diffusion, deflection, and absorbtion. I repeat: egg cartons will actually color your room and make things worse. Take time a diliberate consideration into the rooms you invovle in your music making.
http://mixonline.com/studios/design/audio_taming_room/
http://mixguides.com/studiodesign/tips_and_techniques/taming-acoustic-design-0605/
MONITORING CHAIN HYPE: monitors are different from hi fi speakers or consumer audio speakers. monitors have a flat frequency responce that allows you to hear you music the way it actually sounds with no added color or tone, provided you have a room that compliments the monitors. read on.
http://www.ehow.com/facts_5962330_difference-between-speaker-studio-monitor.html
http://www.sweetwater.com/shop/studio/studio-monitors/buying-guide.php
http://www.tweakheadz.com/studio_monitors.htm
TUBE VS TRANSISTORS: genral information good to know. part of your signal path. the more you you learn about production, the more you will spend on your signal path.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_sound
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor
BIT DEPTH: we are in a new age of digital recording and completely computer based studios. Welcome to bit depth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_bit_depth
VOCALS:most common question's i get are about how to record vocals, here are some starting points.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct98/articles/20tips.html
http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/article.asp?ID=77
MICROPHONE TYPES AND USES: signal path knowledge, get it while its hot. you can't fix everything in the mix you need nice recordings which means nice mics and nice signal paths.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1995_articles/jun95/microphones.html
LOW BUDGET BUT QUALITY MICS:
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/search.php?s=akg+perception
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/search.php?s=Nt1a
http://www.sweetwater.com/c105--Blue_Microphones--Condenser_Microphones
LOUDNESS WAR: quit while it's still music
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122114058
http://www.turnmeup.org/
EFFECTS:
http://www.gmarts.org/index.php?go=221#Phs
http://www.gmarts.org/index.php?go=223
reverb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution_reverb
http://www.earlevel.com/Digital%20Audio/Reverb.html
http://www.harmonycentral.com/docs/DOC-1203
phaser
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaser_(effect)
http://flstudio.image-line.com/help/html/plugins/Fruity%20Phaser.htm
flanger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanging
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-business-articles/guide-to-flange-effect-and-it039s-parameters-1892470.html
delay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_(audio_effect)
http://emusician.com/mag/emusic_better_late/
http://www.modernbeats.com/hit-talk/make-your-mixes-wider-than-ever/
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/manual-1.2/effects_delay.html
chorus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorus_effect
http://www.audio-production-tips.com/chorus-effect.html
http://flstudio.image-line.com/help/html/plugins/Fruity%20Chorus.htm
tube saturator
http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/production/how-to-use-saturation-effectively/
gating
http://emusician.com/tutorials/emusic_golden_gates/
http://www.ee.columbia.edu/~ronw/ads...s/lecture3.pdf
RECORDING AND MIXING:Many of these links are just links pulled from certain sections of the "comprehensive help links". Nothing real novel here, just a few places to start.
mixing
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun98/articles/20tips.html
drums
http://www.recordingeq.com/EQ/req0301/feature.html
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb01/articles/drummix.aspguitar
guitar
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug98/articles/20tips.html
http://www.audiorecording.me/tips-in-mixing-bass-guitar-like-a-pro.html
http://www.audiorecording.me/tips-in-mixing-electric-guitars-using-double-tracking-technique.html
http://www.homerecordingconnection.com/news.php?action=view_story&id=140
SOFTWARE TRIALS:places to start in the digital domain
http://flstudio.image-line.com/documents/download.html
http://www.reaper.fm/download.php
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Audio/Audio-Editors-Recorders/Reason.shtml
http://free-loops.com/download-pro-tools-8.php
http://www.cubasefreedownload.com/
http://www.acoustica.com/mixcraft/download.htm
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Audio/Apple-Logic-Pro-Updater.shtml
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
AUTOTUNE:You thought I forgot, huh? autotune is quite controversal. But in reality, auto tune has been around long before (long before= decades) T-pain got ahold of it. In fact vocoding was invented by the military for pilots (so were compressors) but musicians started using the technology creatively (those damn musicians and their creativity). When used correctly, auto tune is very transparent and hard to discern. Most people that claim to hate auto tune, have artists in their cd case that use it extensively. The robot effect is created when auto tune's key and scale settings are abused and don't reflect the actuall key and scale of the song its used in. Either way, if you wanna fatten up a multi track vocal, or your a hip hop head and you wanna come in on the hook sounding like R2D2, or if your simply an electronic musician that spends his days tweaking envelopes shapers, LFO's, and ADSR settings and don't have time for singing lessons on top of all that, here you go. Antares and melodyne price ranges up and down, kerovee is free, but i have never used kerovee so I can't say whether it does the same thing as auto tune and melodyne or not. Don't get wrapped up in the auto-arguments, don't rely on it to make bad tracks good but don't turn into some kind of technophobic purist.
http://www.antarestech.com/products/auto-tune-evo.shtml
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/navigation?q=melodyne+studio&src=3WWRWXGB&ZYXSEM=0&gclid=CNuTk_ejyaMCFQpV5wod7A8lsw
http://www.g200kg.com/en/software/kerovee.html
INTERFACES:
http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.family&ID=recording
http://www.sweetwater.com/shop/computer-audio/audio_interfaces/
CAN RECORDING ARTISTS GET PAID ANYMORE?:
http://www.hometracked.com/2007/05/1...-indie-artist/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...82610186.shtml
http://musicians.about.com/od/musici...funding101.htm
SELL YOUR MUSIC FOR $$$:
http://www.tunecore.com/#
http://www.blastmymusic.com/
http://www.taxi.com/music-business-faq/makemoney/
http://www.mymusicsite.com/home/default.aspx
RATE YOUR MUSIC SITES:
http://www.ratemycreation.com/
http://ratemyband.com/
