What happens when you convert a jazzy R&B beat to some electronica dirty groove? You get my remix! And that's what I did to that "American Boy" track on the radio right now

Here's the YouTube version ...

I found the accapella online and was thrilled because (more...)

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...)

It's that time of year when new always seems "better". That new 8-core MacPro looks nice and shiny! Think of all the plugins I could run with an 8-core machine! It would stomp all over my dual G5, right?

Let's jump into a theoretical upgrade see what happens for a moment:

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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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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...)

Finally! Another 1 hour song! We've been trying to find time to do another tuneback for weeks ... but we made it happen two days ago! And this time with one of my best friends, Jesse Janzen. Jesse has been known to collaborate with us from time to time, so we thought it'd be perfect (since he's in town) to bust out a 1 hour song. A little background on Jesse: Actor, Lives in LA, brilliant writer, can be seen in various movies such as Crywolf.

Have a listen to Electric Core: (download mp3)

Our first 1 hour song was a success. So much of a success that we've decided to put a remastered version of "Delicious" (more...)

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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Recently, Judy (Mom) came back from a spiritual retreat. A lot of it focused on what messages mother Earth is giving to us (mankind). We had written this ambient track a while ago (last September) and shelved it because it didn't fit the artistic vision of “Mimi & Teft”. When Judy got back, she was inspired by all these messages from Earth and had the perfect set of lyrics for this nearly forgotten song, titled “This Old Heart”. Take a listen ...

Download Mp3 Here

In Judy's own words ... (more...)