At some point, it’s going to happen to every band: great gig, shabby sound. While sometimes it’s the venue or local sound tech that’s to blame, the band also has a hand in how they sound. Every band’s stage sound partly determines their success, so whether you’re playing a small café or a big venue, you’ll want to make sure that you come prepared.

Partly thanks to televised talent show competitions, there are more vocalists than ever. Some opt to join a choir, while others sing solo. And then there are pop and jazz lovers who sing a-cappella as part of a vocal group. Want to know what it takes to sing in a vocal group? Simply read on.

In his previous guest-blog, radio DJ Sander de Heer explained how you can get into podcasting. If you’ve come up with a plan in the meantime, then you’re ready for the next step: getting more people to listen to your podcast. Sander points out a number of important things you need to pay attention to.

Want to start a podcast but don’t think you have the right voice for it? Don’t worry, the trick is actually not to engage in deejay-speak, talk very loud or constantly spout esoteric lingo. Using your normal voice and speaking as if you’re talking to a friend is always the best approach. Guest-blogger and radio DJ Sander de Heer is here to talk shop again.

Mixing any audio puts both sides of your brain to work, with the technical side of things calling on the left brain and the creative stuff calling on the right brain. When you’re having to constantly switch between the two, it can slow things down. So, when inspiration strikes, and you can already hear what you want the track to sound like and you’re itching to get started, it can be a bit of a buzzkill to have to make sends and seek out plugins before you can actually get stuck in.

Looking for a way to get that pure, modern pop sound on your vocals? Guestblogger and home studio coach, Ben van Essen shares three tips to help you gain radio-ready sound.

While you can’t actually ‘see’ a voice-over, it’s the element that conveys the message. Some voice-overs are so well expressed, that you not only hear what’s being said, but see images, feel things, smell things and even taste things. But how can a voice artist pull this off? A little empathy and some acting talent can go a long way, of course, but it’s just as important to know what you’re doing and really know the material you’re working with so that, when you speak, you’re speaking consciously. In this article, Myra Grünning explains how to make your voice-overs more expressive. Myra is a qualified speech therapist and speech coach and also works as a voice-over artist herself.

We could easily come up with at least a thousand-and-one fascinating things to say about the electric guitar but who has time for that? Instead, we’ve somehow managed to narrow it down to just five!

Pretty much everyone and their brother has a podcast nowadays. If you’ve been thinking about getting in on the action too, there are a few things you should know. Guest-blogger and experienced radio presenter Sander de Heer is here to share some of his wisdom and help keep you from calling it quits after your second episode.

Plug-ins are loved and detested at the same time. Analogue-based sound engineers find them clinical and unnatural, while for in-the-box* producers, plug-ins offer access to eye-wateringly expensive studio hardware without actually having to fork out thousands of pounds, making them infinitely useful. Guest-blogger Daan van Dreumel is here to tell you which plug-ins are a must-have for pro-grade music production, how they work and to which bit of legendary kit they owe their name and fame.

Most musicians will agree that singing is the most vulnerable way of making music. At the same time, that vulnerability makes vocals a great vehicle for expressing and evoking emotion. When it comes to singing with emotion effectively, there’s one thing that’s absolutely essential: connection.

These days, it would be hard to imagine life without games, and anyone who’s ever played a game will know that the music is an essential part of the whole experience. But how do you ‘score’ the soundtrack of a whole video game? What does the process look like? And is it any different from writing an album or a movie soundtrack? Guestblogger and composer Jonathan van den Wijngaarden gives us a look behind the scenes of this relatively new branch of the music industry.