As many of you know, in addition to my production and mixing work, I have a fairly successful career as a mastering engineer. It has actually been the majority of my work in this last crazy year we are living through. I recently did something people might not expect... I hired a mastering engineer. [caption…
Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that Billie Eilish and her brother/producer Finneas completely dominated the GRAMMYs® this year. Personally, I am really happy to see extremely creative new music having both industry recognition and fantastic commercial success. I think it is also inspiring that, even though it was mixed and…
3 Women’s Scholarships announced for the 4th annual Mountain Recording Retreat.
Repost of Boston AES Press Release Audio Builders Workshop Announces the Selkie Scholarship for Mountain Recording Retreat The Audio Builders Workshop has announced the formation of the Selkie Scholarship. The Scholarship (a $1,347 value) to attend the Mountain Recording Retreat, hosted by Recording Boot Camp, is being offered to 3 qualified women age 18 or…
The video lessons you really need! (hint: they are not from me)
I came across a video recently that I had seen a several years ago and I was reminded of how profoundly it helped me as producer. It was not an EQ trick, it was not a snare sound tutorial, it was a video by the amazing Bootsy Collins, the king of funk bass. In the…
The most underrated piece of gear in pro audio?
I have been working a lot with the A Designs Ventura SE, which is a mic pre, EQ and direct recording amp (see video to see how that is something different from a normal DI). It has been come one of my most used outboard tools and I have come to the conclusion that it…
When to bring automation into your mixing workflow
Automation is great in a mix! The ability to sculpt a mix dynamically by bringing emphasis (or de-emphasis) to various elements throughout the song is really powerful. We can even use automation to manipulate the rhythmic feel of sections of a mix. But, in my experience, the point at which we incorporate automation into the…
Mix Like a Wedding Photographer
I am on my last day of mixing a 10 song album for a Canadian folk-rock artist. Last night I was working on one of the tunes that is more natural and acoustic based. I had the vocal panned straight up the middle and the main acoustic guitar panned off to the right side. About…
Why record real drums if you are using samples in the mix?
A student taking my online Drum Recording Boot Camp course asked me an interesting question this week after studying the section on using samples to supplement acoustic drums in a mix. He asked: "If you are going to use samples in the mix, why not just use drum trigger pads instead of recording acoustic drums?" This…
Fixing a Vocal Using Auto-Tune, without using autotune to fix the vocal
This article is in my e-book, "Audio Recording Boot Camp". Get it free here (Auto-tune is a registered trademark of Antares, but I am using the term here generically to describe all pitch correction software) Since the beginning of recorded music we have had to deal with the fact that some vocalists do not sing…
Ronan’s Top 10 Plugin Alliance Plugins
I have bought a lot of plugins from Plugin Alliance, and since becoming friends with the guys that run the company, I have helped them out with some volunteer beta testing and I have used some of their plugins in my videos (some of which they put on their website). This has given me the…