Studio & Recording

As the cornerstone of any studio production, vocals are often what listeners base their opinion on, whether consciously or subconsciously. No matter how fat your drums and synths sound, if the vocals are slightly off, the whole thing quickly drops in overall quality. No worries though, we’re here to teach you how to mix the most out of your vocal recordings using DAW software!

To make great recordings and mixes, good monitoring is absolutely essential. With the combination of a set of good studio monitors and studio headphones, you can get a clearer image of how your masterpiece is going to do in the big, wide world. The position of your studio monitors and the layout of your studio is therefore just as important. Here, we offer some golden rules when it comes to placing your monitors, so you can get nothing but the very best out of them.

Everyone does it: get on the train and hole up with a good pair of headphones or ear-buds; soundtrack their walk to work with some happy-music, or go for a jog while jacked into some solid motivational smash hits. In most of these everyday sitches, you’re likely to push the volume up to compete with the traffic, the other commuters on the bus, or the heavy breathing of your fellow joggers. Fair enough. But what most people don’t realise is that this can unfortunately cause your delicate ears some serious damage. In this blog, we seek to answer the most essential questions regarding the hearing damage caused by using a humble set of headphones or ear-buds.

If you’re completely new to FL, or Fruity Loops Studio, and you want to get to know the software, you’ve come to the right place. Before diving headfirst into the countless tutorials, guides and courses, it’s a great idea to get a better picture of what the general workflow of this DAW is like. Guest-blogger Tim Ease is here to tell you about the basics of FL Studio 20 (the successor to FL Studio 12), and guide you through creating your first track.

Covering a song that has moved or touched you in some way can be a challenging endeavor. For starters, recording a cover or remake entails much more than just copying or repeating what you’ve heard. As with any musical performance, a song cover should be uniquely yours. Whether you want to cover a popular Beatles song or something that’s more obscure, doing your own version entails creativity, originality, and a certain level of boldness.

Whether you’re browsing the internet for a vocal microphone for the stage or a condenser for your studio, it won’t be long before you’ll run into the term ‘pickup pattern’, also referred to as ‘polar pattern’. You’re also likely to bump into terms like ‘cardioid’ or ‘omnidirectional’. In this blog, I’ll present you with the pickup pattern basics, include a few field examples, and tell you what you need to know when you’re looking to, ahem, pick up a new microphone.

People often ask our humble helpdesk how they can connect a microphone to their computer or laptop. It’s not a weird question since, you simply don’t know what you don’t know and, if you’re a little afraid of damaging your pristine MacBook, or you don’t want to just randomly order some gear, it’s more than understandable. Luckily, there are a number of ways to do it and it doesn’t even have to cost that much.

Taking a little time out from working his show, The Polarizer, globetrotter and experienced podcaster, Dick Hoebee shares some tips and recommends some gear to help you make what’s fast becoming the new radio-show format and prove that anyone can start podcasting, no matter the budget.

It seems like a fairly simple question: how can I connect my electric or acoustic guitar to a computer, like a PC, Mac or laptop, smartphone or tablet? It may or may not be a surprise to hear that our helpdesk get asked this question a lot, and quite right, since this kind of stuff is not always as straightforward as it seems. In this blog, we cover all the ways and means you can hook up your guitar and start playing and recording.

Sometimes, something happens that means you can’t play any shows for a little while. This not only makes the life of a musician or band a little bit boring, it also messes with that delicate relationship you’ve built with your devoted fans. To keep the love alive, you could easily live-stream a gig from the comfort of your living room or rehearsal space and you can even do it with great sound quality!

You can find one on a lot of different studio-related equipment: the S/PDIF connection. But what does this mysterious connector even do and why would you want to use it? In this blog, we’ll tell you what you need to know about S/PDIF, as well as its professional sibling AES/EBU and the cables required to get it all working properly.

Singers forgetting the next lyric, drummers who struggle to stay in time, guitarists who keep playing that same bum note and buzzing audio gear … For all musicians, sound technicians and producers, these problems might be all too familiar.