So you're a DJ and you love a radio hit that's currently topping the charts. But you don't have a club'ish remix .... Why not make one! I remixed Rihanna's Umbrella track (sorry, it's rough ... I spent about 2 hours on it) to give it a more housey 4 to the floor flavor. I YouTubed it .. check it out:

So let's take a look at the process of remixing from a radio master .... (more...)

Okay .. First one hour song of the year ... well, not quite an hour. More like hour and thirty minutes (it's always the lyricists fault!). My best bud Jesse Janzen was up from LA and sat in on this session. Anddddd .. We had Kate Janzen as the "Director of Photography" for the video. Very cool stuff.

The song's called Badlands and we've got two video versions: A 4:20 length quicky overview, and the full length version (1:27:35) for those that want to see how the hour/half shook down.

Listen to the mp3: (download mp3)
And check out the Video:

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YO! It's been way too long since my last post ... but, music business has been kicking up for Mimi & Teft. I've got very little free time to write. But, we had time for a tuneback! We did a twist this time around ... we video taped it! I made a 2 min edit of the whole hour and posted it to youtube. Check it out:

Here's the final mp3: (download mp3)

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So I decided to try out the demo of the new compressor by FabFilter called "Pro-C". I'd imagine "C" stands for compressor. I'm a huge fan of the FabFilter products ... Twin, Timeless, Volcano ... there all great! But I've always thought of FabFilter tools as synths and funky effects. Not bread and butter tools (like compressors).

I decided to put the Pro-C up against my two favorite software compressors ... Logic's Compressor and the Sonalksis SV-315. Both have distinctive sounds, and both are heavily used in my productions. When I first test out new goodies I start out with a drum beat and then add the sugar (plugins!)
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So you've got some guitar amps laying around that don't get use anymore because your head is always in the computer building beats ... use them for the beat creation process! Just like you'd use Amplitube or Trash, REAL guitar amps are the pinnacle of crunchified dirty sounds. And what takes dirty processing in a fabulous fashion? Beats.

First off, we need to make sure some fundamentals are understood when sending signals out to guitar amps. What do you plug into a guitar amp? (more...)

Why do we have to have an endless number of audio plugin formats? I can't imagine being an audio developer today and having to support so many different formats and operating systems. You've got Windows, Mac, and now Linux for the OS's, but the plugins are ridiculous. When Apple bought Logic, they dropped support for Windows (which was the reason I switched to Apple!) but they also dropped VST support! Crazy ... A lot of developers only support VST.

VST, AudioUnit, MAS, 32bit, 64bit, PowerPC, MacTel, ohh my god! Look at a KVRAudio post by Zebra developer URS:

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A lot of people ask me when they first get started in building a home studio "what do you recommend I buy?" It's such a broad question! So many choices, options, and paths to walk down. Do you dance with Digidesign and the ProTools money pit? Or do you amalgamate a digital audio workstation from Logic and Motu gear? Or do you go analog and mix everything through a mackie board? Or a combo of both? Ahhh! Options!!!

A common mistake is when somebody drops $3,000 - $4,000 on a microphone and only spends $400 on a sound card (audio converters). Big mistake! Lots of records have been cut with cheap microphones, but the difference is they were cut using analog tape. With digital recording, you inherently lose definition because the sound waves become steps (16bit has about 65,000 steps. 24bit has a few million). Analog tape is not restricted by steps (or bit depth).

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I remember when I first started out in music production not having a single clue how samples and loops were constructed. I was like "how do people produce these sounds?!" One the goals for this blog is to help people learn production techniques and to give away production material (loops, samples, kits, etc). My first post on audio loops was under producing "electro loops". I decided to go a more generic route and produce basic, backbone type loops for this post.

The great thing about creating loops for the purpose of loop production, is you can start from ANYWHERE! I had produced a set of loops about 3 years ago that were alright, but not spectacular. I decided to load up a loop from that collection into Native Instruments Kontakt 2 and slice the loop for individual hits. Kontakt makes this relatively simple. I always start by sequencing a click track with the hihat-like sound. Then I play the beats with M-Audio's Trigger Finger. Here's the result:

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I'm to the point now, where Logic Pro hasn't crashed in a long time. I'm sure it has to do with configuration, hardware, and plugins ... but man, why would I stick an OS upgrade into a machine that's doing exactly what it's suppose to!

I just recently read about a lot of people having difficulties with the latest OSX 10.4.10 upgrade. It's creating pops, snaps, and crackles in the audio lines!!! AHH!! That's a musicians nightmare (especially an engineer!) I remember days being incredibly frustrated with my equipment, because of crashes, config issues, etc. Why would I change anything now?? (more...)

Ever since Mimi and I went to Miami I've been loving that electro sound. Hearing it in the clubs was tight! So I thought, why not make an electro-ish beat? Cool. Then I thought, instead of relying on drum samples in things like Stylus RMX, make the beat out of Logic's own synths (ES1, ES2)! Below is a sample of the full beat (with a bassline using Vanguard).

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