Category: Tutorials

Reverb is one of those effects that it’s hard to avoid. It pulls things together in a mix, giving a sense of coherence and space, and even if you’re creating a very dry, close-sounding mix, a touch of reverb is still almost unavoidable. Once upon a time, and not all that long ago really, if…

For a long time it seemed like guitarists were resisting using computers, and it’s actually quite easy to understand why. However, a new generation of guitarists are far more comfortable with software, computers and mobile devices, so there’s no excuse for anyone to be a tech hold-out any longer. Ableton Live has always versatile, and that’s just…

Stereo buss compression is one of the essential techniques of any mix engineer. You don’t have to use it every time, but it’s incredibly important to understand how to use it, so you know when to bring it to the table and when to leave it off. But while stereo buss compression can work wonders…

The good old MIDI keyboard might seem a tad redundant when we have so many high-tech ways to control Live, but it can still be one of our best friends. Unlike Push, for example, a keyboard simply works with any music software on your computer – and maybe with iOS and Android devices, too. If you…

Despite the revival of analogue synthesis, there’s still a significant amount of love and respect for the thoroughly modern ‘digital’ synthesizer – most notably, Native Instruments’ Massive and Xfer Records’ Serum. The appeal of these instruments is easy to see – while analogue synths are the kings of warmth, digital synths really tend to come to…

There are so many bonuses to using DAWs in music production that sometimes it can get overwhelming and you end up just focusing on certain key elements. With Reason, it’s the rack that we often get sidetracked by, with the sheer number of instruments and effects that we can have plumbed into our mixer for the ultimate…

More than any other part of the music-production workflow, the art and science of mastering seems to evolve and adapt dramatically over time. The reasons behind these fundamental shifts can be explained in two ways – an evolution in music formats and more intriguingly, changes in peoples’ taste in respect to the perceived ‘sound’ of…