Music production advice for the do-everything-yourself operation
I find there to be many misconceptions in understanding stereo. So I thought I would clarify some things. Many thanks to Aliki Rodgers for his contributions. What is Mono? Mono (short for monophonic) means one channel of audio. Stereo means more than one. When you record a vocal into your DAW using one microphone and […]
This article serves to help you understand the concept of gain staging and how to apply it when mixing in Logic Pro X. What is gain staging? Gain staging is level management. It comes from the analogue days where it was essential to get a good signal-to-noise ratio whilst preventing clipping distortion. More info on […]
It’s a common misconception that the loudness potential is determined in mastering. It’s true that the loudness potential is achieved in mastering, but it’s not predetermined there. Loudness potential? Glad you asked! The loudness potential of a mix is how far the mastering engineer can take it before audible audio degradation occurs. For a really basic […]
Loudness normalisation is a thing. There is no point in overcooking your masters now. If you over-do it, your master will objectively sound worse (and quieter) after being loudness-matched with more dynamic material. This will happen in today’s loudness normalised platforms which include YouTube, Apple Music, TIDAL, and Spotify. If this is news to you, I suggest […]
There will never be a replacement for hiring the ears and experience of a professional mastering engineer. Having said that, many people do successfully master their own music at home. It certainly can be done, but you do need to have a foundation of knowledge to help make those masters translatable. You may even be at […]
What is Loudness Normalisation? There is a lot of confusion around the topic of loudness normalisation in the audio community. Even some reputable music producers have had the wrong idea when posting tips to their facebook page. Fortunately, this infographic nails it. It single-handedly explains the current state of loudness normalisation and it just happens to come […]
Free Logic Pro X Presets From Jake Masca My friend Jake Masca has just released a bunch of channel strip presets he created from scratch using Logic Pro X. Check out the video below where he demos the presets and shows you where you can get them. Be sure also to subscribe to Jake’s channel. Jake frequently does live […]
What is headroom? Headroom generally refers to the difference, measured in decibels, between zero (full scale / 0dbFS) and the peak value of the signal itself. I’m sure you’ve heard about the rule of thumb advising that you should leave 6dB of headroom for the mastering engineer. This isn’t bad advice but it’s not to be […]
Sometimes we just need to reposition our aux tracks! Is that too much to ask?! Step 1: Create Your Aux Track(s) You’ve probably already done this. However, you may simply create an aux track via send or by changing the output of an existing track. In this example, I simply clicked-and-held on the button that represents […]
Logic Pro is great. It’s even better when you’re armed with some killer workflows! 1. Bounce In Place This one helps you commit to your work and move on to the next stage in your project whilst actually helping conserve your Mac’s computational resources. When you are happy with a particular MIDI region, simply ctl+click […]
