Mastering.

The word is a meaningless black cloud to many musicians and amateur engineers. And, sad to say, some pros.

I used to wonder what the hell the mastering engineer even did. After all, the song is mixed, right? What else really needs to be done?

Also I got really suspicious when the same names kept popping up. Bob Ludwig. Bernie Grundmann. Eddie Schreyer. Ted Jensen. Stephen Marcussen. Do these guys ever sleep?

Maybe - MAYBE - they really don't do anything at all.

Or maybe they are the operators of the Magic Mastering Machine - one button, that's all. Feed your mix in and out comes the mastered product.

Well, this is sheer balderdash. Mastering is one of the most important and least understood roles in commercial music production, and you have to understand it if you're going to engineer a product that will stand up on CD, on tape, on RealAudio, and most importantly, on the radio.

This article does not presume to teach anyone ... Read More »

A couple of months ago, I detailed Samplitude 2496 (from SEK'D). Since this DAW software supports 24Bit recording at Sample Rates up to 96kHz, and all major DAW software is soon to follow... it makes sense to also review the hardware side of a 24Bit 96kHz system. That brings us to this month's review of the Prodif 96 and the SEK'D 2496s A/D D/A converters (AKA the little guy).

Prodif 96 - The Audio Card

Features

Introduction

I just love microphones.

I am constantly scouring the classies, garage sales, web sites, and music stores for deals and steals -- the vintage, the obscure, and the just plain weird. I have a smattering of just about everything, from the common workhorses to the all-time classics to the super-el-cheapo pieces of junk.

None of them are the perfect mic for everything (I don't believe any one mic can be), but all of them (well, at least the ones that function!) are the perfect mic for something. As my dear mother used to say, "there's somebody out there for everyone," and so I believe it is with microphones as well -- for every task there exists the perfect mic, and for every mic there is a task to which it is perfectly suited. I also believe that if you can acquire the knack of choosing the proper microphone for the job, and can place it properly to obtain the sound you're striving for -- before that sound hits the rust -- your job as a recording engineer is about 80% accomplished.
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Hello readers. This month I'd like to concentrate on the songwriting aspect of the music business, as I've come to know it.

Over the past 8 years I have had as clients some of the biggest-selling songwriters in the music business. They are in addition to the other ‘as of yet unknown' writers who like what I bring to their songs. From working so close with these people I have come to learn a few things that seem to be consistent with all of them:

1. You are only as good as your current hit.
2. Nobody cares what you did yesterday.
3. Nobody cares at all which software or computer you wrote your song on
4. Nobody cares.

I had always assumed that just because you had a few big-time, #1 records to your credit, that automatically entitled you to special consideration by every record company A & R person when it came time to pick songs to be recorded by an artist. No such luck. Just because you had a big hit on Toni Braxton's last album, don't expect her to ... Read More »

I'd like to devote my column this month to a subject that seems to be a mystery to most musicians, producers, engineers, and songwriters - Background Vocals. Let's start with a simple definition: "Background Vocals" are those that are not the lead or main vocal. They can come in various forms - ooohs, aaahs, actual repeating of the lyrics, completely different lyrics, or moans and sighs (especially in hip-hop and rap).

The people who perform these vocals also come in different shapes and sizes - from thin, sickly looking Caucasians who can read fly-shit without a drop of feeling to great big huge African American women straight outta the Church, who can turn a collective "Yeah" into a spine-tingling chant that is far more powerful than even our beloved national anthem. Put on the radio and start singing along. Chances are that even the most tone deaf among us will pick up on the "chorus" sung by the background vocals, rather than the riff-laden lead vocal, which is usually beyond the vocal ability ... Read More »

Welcome to the long-awaited third (and final) installment of All Things Being EQ-ual, a series of articles on equalization that started back in April 1998. This final article, a titanic, tussling tête á tête of software EQ programs for the PC, was supposed to appear in the June issue. It didn't. I won't go into the reasons for the delay here; suffice to say that I do sincerely apologize to all the ProRec readers who waited so patiently for this article to be published. I hope it will have been worth the wait!

If you're jumping on this train late and missed the first two installments, or would like to review, please follow the links to check out Part One and/or Part Two. Have fun, and don't worry... we'll still be here when you get back.

Back already? Okay... let's move on then. We'll be reviewing and comparing software ... Read More »

Cosmic Message...

Time Travel

I had a few people write to me and ask how I recorded my vocals. I record my vocals several different ways depending on the vocalist, style of music and my mood. But there are some basic things you can do to help improve the way your vocals sound.

Next month I'll give you some specific tweaky tips.

1) Use your best mic! This is usually a no-brainier. A better mic will usually be more accurate than the $50 K-Mart special you got from aunt Edna last Christmas. Preferably, you'll use a large diaphragm condenser mic like the Rode NT-2 or AT-4050. These capture more bass and warmth then a small diaphragm like a AKG C-1000 or the SM81. A condenser mic will pick up more detail then a dynamic mic like a SM57. That's not to say that you can't use a 57. There are some times when a condenser will pick up too much detail and I'll pull out a dynamic.

2) Plug the mic into your best mic pre. A preamp is unique because it's amplifying the signal from a tiny voltage to a large v ... Read More »

Since I was a teenager, I've been enamored of music by Kraftwerk, Jean-Michael Jarre, Ultravox, Vangelis, and others. Unfortunately, with the exception of the built in Arpeggiators on some keyboards, MIDI has never been quite up to the task of producing this kind of music, unless it is through-composed (in other words, you program and play every note and filter setting). That is why I'm thrilled with some of the new software products that emulate the old step sequencers and arpeggiators. Here are some of the coolest ones I've found:

Seq-303

When I was first starting out as a musician, I was blown away by even small recording studios.

The studio where my band was cutting its teeth was a little garage operation. The owner had converted the utility room and garage into a control room and a studio. This was pre-ADAT, with a 16-track digital recorder, a 24x16 mixer, a couple of DATs, some standard rack effects (DBX compressors, Eventide Harmonizer, Yamaha reverbs, etc.), and a few decent mics.

The problem with the studio was that the recording space was dead. Dead-dead-deadsky. Over a foot of fiberglass insulation and sandbags had eaten the life right out of the room. The Yamaha piano, normally a bright instrument, sounded limp. You couldn't get a guitar to feed back. The drum booth, about the size of a phone booth, was too small to allow the full tone of the kick drum to develop, and the cymbals would just kill you.

Of course the point of all that insulation and sandbagging was to keep the sound out of the nei ... Read More »

Here I am trying to explain Rip Rowan's survey of the Prorec readership.

And he's asking about my profession, that is, my area of expertise, and whether I'm an amateur or expert. And I'm thinking, "Profession? What can this mean today, where digital audio tools are ever-more-accessible, where more people can have more control over the entire process of musical design- performance- engineering- production- distribution."

It's All Me, Now!

Getting the bass sound right is one of the hardest parts of recording modern music. When the average listener subconsciously listens to music, the bass is the instrument that they're listening to. And they probably don't know it.

So, how to record that killer-thumpin-groovular bass?

I do a lot of work with Chuck Rainey. Chuck is one of the all-time bass masters, with credits ranging from Aretha Franklin to Steely Dan to Sanford and Son. I have learned a lot about getting good bass sounds working with Chuck - and other artists - and can share a little applied wisdom.

First off, I'm a big fan of Fender basses.

I do like Roger Sadowsky's basses, though... but they are very Fender-like as well. Lots of expensive basses sound great on stage or amped, but really give you living hell when you try to take them direct... they're so 'supercharged' that they either completely take over the mix, or disa ... Read More »

There is quite a buzz about the Yamaha DSP Factory these days.

The DSP Factory is a PC-based recording system built around the DS2416 soundcard and optional input/output (I/O) components. And with the imminent release of the DSP Factory, the buzz is growing even louder. A listing of the basic features of the card has been available on Yamaha's web site for a while, but detailed information on the capabilities of the card has been scarce.

Personally, I'm excited about the card too, so I went to Nashville on a quest to find out some details. I was lucky enough to have Yamaha's Mark Lopez give me a demo of the card at the NAMM show. Mark was then nice enough to spend the better part of an hour with me (on the phone), filling in details I didn't ask about at the show.

Disclaimer time… Since the card isn't shipping yet, features and specs are still subject to change… Also note that I have not had the opportunity to use a DSP Factory in my own studio to verify al ... Read More »

Nearly 600 manufacturers of all things musical crammed the Nashville Convention Center and the Nashville Arena from July 10th through the 12th for the summer NAMM show. There was obviously more to see and write about than space allows, so this report will focus on Soundcards and Software for the PC-based studio, plus Other Cool Stuff.

As an aside, I've heard that NAMM stands for Not Available, Maybe May (when referring to the January show). It seems the summer show stands for Not Available, Maybe in a Month. Lots of products were being demo'd that weren't in production yet. I expect most of these products will be on the streets by the time of the AES show in September.

PC Soundcards/Audio Interfaces

Limiters, gates, expanders, multiband compressors, de-essers, normalizers, ultramaximizers. These are all variants of the basic compressor, and they all can do a lot to help you get the most out of your mix.

If you missed part one of this series, go back and give it a read. It will help explain the basics of compression - what it is, why it's used, what the controls do, and when to use it.

In this issue, we're going to look at the rest of the dynamics controllers and see what they can do for you. And we'll get a little deeper into our understanding of what dynamics processors do.

To better explain these tools, I'd like to introduce the concept of transfer function. A processor's transfer function can be thought of as a mapping of input levels to corresponding output levels. If I put in a -12 db signal, when comes out the other side?

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