If you've ever visited a professional recording studio, you may have noticed the large amount of outboard equipment that many studios still employ. Nestling alongside a traditional mixing console, there will probably be an abundance of outboard rack units, offering a host of external processing. It’s likely that many of these will be compressors.

There was a time when compressors were only available in hardware, meaning that you would need a single compressor per track - which could feasibly add up to a large number of units.

Today, as we’re operating largely in the plugin-heavy DAW-domain, the landscape has changed significantly. No longer do you have to have an external compressor (although many of us still do) and now you can use as many as you like from within your storehouse of plugins and emulations.

First and foremost, compression is all about dynamic range. The vast majority of compressors offer the same basic set of controls. Some compressors extend a little further, but a basic set of half a dozen controls will likely always be available.

But why is it necessary to compress? Let's suggest that you are working within a conventional song style, with a basic band lineup of drums, bass guitar, guitar, and vocals. While all of these elements would benefit from degrees of compression, there are two elements that will benefit above all others.

Firstly, the vocal part will probably want to sit dynamically above the band elements, and secondly, the bass part provides the perfect foundation for a traditional song format. There is no better way to accentuate this foundation than applying a touch of compression to the bass.

So let’s concentrate specifically on the bass, focussing on appropriate settings and styles of compressor that bring something to the bass party.

Most compressors, whether hardware, software or in pedal-form, typically present some form of metering, either in the style of LEDs or as a needle on a meter.

Despite these being analog elements, it is very common to see a VU meter facsimile on a plugin compressor.

So, let's go through it step-by-step, assuming no prior knowledge.

Apply your chosen compressor plugin to your bass channel (we're using Logic's in-built compressor) and play your track.

The chances are, the compressor metering will not be doing very much at this stage. This is because we need to adjust the control known as Threshold.

Think of this control as being a monitor for the level of the signal entering the compressor circuit. The level has to reach the point of threshold, before the compressor begins to work.

Consequently, reducing the threshold level, should elicit a twitch of the metering, at which point the compressor will begin to do its thing.

Increasing the threshold will probably prevent the compressor from doing anything, unless it is exposed to a very high level of signal.

As a starting point, decrease the threshold point so that the metering starts to twitch.

The meter will probably be displaying something known as Gain Reduction - there may even be a switch to activate this mode.

The greater the movement of the meter, the harder the compressor is beginning to work, but what is it actually doing?

Once your bass signal has extended past the threshold point, it begins to limit the signal.

We can control the amount of compression, which is dictated by the Ratio control.

Working in tandem with the threshold, an increase in the amount of ratio will dictate a greater level of compression, lowering what would be the level of output if the compressor were not in place.

If you are working with some form of synth-bass, in a style such as EDM, you will want a relatively low threshold point, with a relatively high ratio.

This will create a bass track which is as flat as a slab of concrete and the perfect foundation for a commercial EDM track - quick to take effect and heavily compressed!

If, on the other hand, you are working in a more acoustic environment, you may want to increase the level of threshold, and reduce the ratio of compression.

This will elicit a more natural response, which for an acoustic setting is exactly what you want. You don't particularly want to hear what the compressor is doing, you just want to keep your bass under control should the odd rogue peak emerge in the bass part.

You may also find a control described as Make-Up Gain; think of this as a secondary volume control, which allows you to increase or decrease the volume outputted, post compressor circuit. This can be particularly useful - especially for very heavily-compressed bass parts - when you want to balance against a drum part.

There are three other controls that will often present themselves in a compressor environment; firstly, the Knee control dictates how subtly or heavily the compression will take effect at the point of threshold.

A subtler iteration is described as soft-knee compression, although you can increase the Knee control to generate what's known as hard-knee compression. The latter being particularly useful for more electronic forms where more literal application is required.

You should also see Attack and Release controls; the Attack control is used to set the time that it takes for the compression to take effect once the signal reaches the threshold.

Setting this value too low can sound very unnatural, but offset by just a few milliseconds, and it will definitely have a positive effect in most instances.

Similarly, the Release control dictates how long the compression will take to subside. This can be particularly useful for pad-like basses, which might have a prolonged sustain at the end of each note.

You would be forgiven for thinking that all compressors are equal. Unfortunately, they really aren't, as alongside their basic compression duties, they often have a sound of their own.

The 1176 FET compressor, is a particularly agile and impressive unit and plugin for keeping control of the rapid transients that can occur in bass sounds, particularly electric guitar and double bass. This front-end-attack agility will keep any fast bass parts under control, while also colouring the bass signal in a really pleasing way.

Similarly, the LA-2 Compressor is another studio legend which lends itself to bass frequencies. It is well known for being slower off the mark when it comes to handling quick transients.

Hence, it has become very commonplace to use these two compressors in tandem, with the 1176 first, followed by the LA-2.

It's the perfect pairing, and is available in numerous forms virtually from many plugin companies, particularly its architect, Universal Audio. It has a lovely virtual version of both the 1176 and the LA-2A.

You will also note that many included DAW compressors adopt similar descriptions in an attempt to clone these hardware staples.

As with all signal processing, there is no substitute for taking your eyes away from the screen - and using your ears to ascertain what’s needed. As it differs track-to-track.

Zone in on the type of bass sound that you want, and if necessary, don't be afraid to add a back-end EQ after the compression part of the signal chain.

With so much beautiful colouration from the likes of the 1176, it is possible to overcook a signal, and the added bonus of backend EQ, will provide a useful level of control for easing a too-present bottom-end.

RECORDING WEEK 2025: Most people with an interest in music production or recording probably have at least a loose idea of what compression does. Put simply, it ‘squeezes’ incoming audio by reducing the dynamic peaks in an audio signal over a certain threshold.

This reduces the dynamic range of the audio – ie the difference between the loudest parts and the quietest parts – and as a result can make the overall level sound louder, since you can raise the volume of a track without worrying about clipping.

When done wrong, however, over-enthusiastic compression can leave music sounding flat and boring.

For newer producers – and, let’s be honest, also us more experienced ones at times – compression can be a bit of a confusing technique. Tutorials on the subject often tell people to ‘trust your ears’ or apply compression ‘to taste’. But that’s often not helpful for those without the requisite experience to know where to start.

To that end, treat this article as your ‘cheat sheet’. In the graphics on this page we’re outlining the basic settings we’d use for a variety of different compression applications.

These do, however, come with a fairly sizable caveat: don’t take these examples as hard and fast rules. More accurately, think of them like presets - they’re starting points you may want to work from.

Compression and other dynamics processes should be tailored to the audio they’re being fed, so feel free to break away from what we’ve outlined here if it sounds right.

Ultimately (uh, oh… here it comes) trust your ears, and if a different setting sounds better – or even if it sounds better with no compression at all – go with what you think is working best.

Compression controls explained

While different compressors often work slightly differently, and controls on offer can vary, there are certain parameters that are common across most effects.

Threshold is used to set the level where the effect kicks in. Any audio that rises in volume above this threshold will be compressed (ie reduced).

The amount that the audio is compressed is determined by the Ratio. A ratio of 2:1, for example, would mean that any audio above the threshold is reduced in volume by half. Exceed your threshold by 2dB, and the signal would be reduced by 1dB; exceed it by 6dB, and the signal would be reduced by 3dB.

Higher ratios mean more aggressive compression, all the way up to ‘infinite’, which results in hard limiting, where any audio exceeding the threshold is cut off completely.

Some compressors also allow something called ‘upward’ compression. This is essentially the opposite of what's described above, where volume is boosted when the level falls below the threshold.

Attack and Release control how abruptly compression is applied and cut off. Attack controls how quickly the reduction in level is applied once the audio breaches the threshold. An attack of 0 would mean the compressor kicks in immediately, while a longer attack will cause the compression to fade in.

Release controls how quickly gain reduction ends once the audio drops back below the threshold. A release time of 0 would mean that the compression stops immediately, longer release times mean that the compression level is reduced more slowly.

Many compressors also feature a Sidechain input. This allows for the compressor to be triggered by an external signal. The most common use of this is using a kick drum to duck the level of a bassline, to avoid the two elements clashing when they play at the same time.

What are the different types of compressor?

Not all compressors are born equal. But why do they sound different at all? And how do you know when to use which ‘type’?

Dating back to vintage hardware devices, there are a few different types of detector/gain control circuit, these are often emulated in modern plugins: VCA (Voltage-Controlled Amp), FET (Field Effect Transistor), variable mu (based on valve plate voltages) and opto (lamp plus photocell).

VCA designs can be very flexible but often the flexibility makes them harder to use. FET designs are responsive but distort sooner, although that distortion is very musical. Opto designs have a softer, more musical attack and tend to let fast transients slip through.

Finally, variable mu can be very fast in attack, however threshold, ratio and knee shape tend to all be very closely interrelated. Some units also have an automatic release option, where the release time changes to suit the incoming signal.

In the plugin world, you’ll also come across multiband compression. This breaks the incoming signal down into different frequency bands and applies compression to these separately, with results that are more like a mix of compression and EQ.

Does every sound in a mix need compression?

The short answer to this is no. If something sounds good without compression applied, then don't think you need to slap a compressor on your track just to because it's what the pros do.

Bear in mind too, that other effects can have a similar result. Subtle saturation, for example, is often just as good as compression when it comes to taming peaks, and can add pleasing harmonics too.

DRUMS WEEK 2025: Record drums? Why would you bother when it’s so easy to simply launch Superior Drummer or BFD, bash out a quick beat on the keyboard, hit the quantise button and get stuck into recording everything else?

It’s certainly true that some of these virtual drums/drummers sound awesome, and offer a mind-boggling choice of sounds and patterns.

Not only that, but they don’t argue, and they don’t issue demands for payment, writing credits or bowls of Smarties with all the blue ones taken out – so it’s effectively a no-brainer, right?

Well, here are some other things that those pieces of drum software – and all the rest of them – don’t do. They don’t know how your song goes; they don’t have ideas; they don’t have a background of musical influences; they don’t know how to make your songs come to life; and they don’t sound unique.

If you’ve ever spent hours trying to program a fill that sounds right, or hi-hat parts that groove, or grace notes on a snare, or a convincing crash-ride, then you’ll know that for all their amazingness, these superb virtual instruments require a lot of work to produce totally lifelike results.

But isn’t recording drums a total nightmare? No, that’s a myth – recording drums is actually surprisingly easy. Admittedly, it’s often the sound of a badly recorded kit that makes an otherwise great track sound like a ‘demo’, but if you follow some simple rules, you can avoid the pitfalls.

Of course, a big, posh recording studio would make things easier, but we’re going to assume you haven’t got one of those and show you how to turn your DAW into a drum studio with nothing more than a basic set of microphones, an eight-channel audio interface, an extra set of headphones and a splitter box.

Apart from the recording gear, the drum kit and the room, there is, of course, one more vital component: the drummer! If your drummer’s not up to scratch, all your efforts will have been wasted. There’s no point listening to a great recording of something crap – but there’s definitely a point in listening to a crap recording of something that’s great! So make sure your drummer is experienced, knows how to tune their kit, hits well and consistently, and can play with a click.

Preparing to record

When setting up a recording session, the first thing you need to sort out is the room in which the drums are going to be recorded. The question is: live or dead?

If you’re making a rock track, you’ll need a ‘live’-sounding room or an adjacent live-sounding room where you can put ambient mics. If there’s a rug on a wooden floor, get rid of it – drums always sound better on a hard surface.

For a dry, disco-sounding kit, you’ll need a ‘dead’ room, like the lounge or bedroom, where soft furnishings help to calm the sound.

The drum kit

A good drummer will know how important it is to get the kit sounding right. Freshly tuned, new heads will have a crisp attack and make the drums nice and loud. Loud drums make the room sound better and don’t get drowned out by cymbal wash.

A common mistake people make is over-damping the drums in pursuit of a dry, '70s type of sound. Bear in mind that lots of top-end resonance and room ambience gets absorbed in the mix by guitars – especially in rock music. Over-damping also makes the drums quiet, so easy does it!

Keep a selection of blankets, pillows and bricks around to help get the kick drum right. Try and keep some life in the sound; don’t muffle it so much that it sounds like a cardboard box. Use the dampening to just shorten the sound. The best thing for dampening the top head of the snare is Moon Gel by RTOM. It costs about £8 and makes fine-tuning snare sounds easy.

The session

Before you hit the record button, you need to prepare your session. Working with a sprawling production featuring 20 tracks of backing vocals and tons of plugins is going to mean complications down the line.

By printing or bouncing down the key elements of your track as new audio files, you can unload all plugins from the session. This will prevent latency problems, so that the drummer will hear everything right in his headphones and there won’t be any complicated latency compensation processes happening in the background.

You should aim to end up with a few bounced ‘stems’ – guide drums, bass, guitars, keys, vocals. Make sure they all start on bar 3 or later, so that you have at least a couple of bars of count-in. The click or guide drum loop can be MIDI-triggered or printed as audio.

These few tracks then need to be turned down to around -15dB – this will leave plenty of headroom for the click to be clearly heard by the drummer over the backing track and the drums.

Getting the spot mics right

Step 1: Once you’ve got your kick sounding good, put a dynamic cardioid mic, like the AKG D112 shown here, inside it. The closer it is to the beater contact point, the punchier a sound you’ll get – 5-6" away is about right, at a 45º angle to the batter (top) head. A small boom stand is ideal for this.

Step 2: This next step isn’t essential, but is well worth trying. Take another mic (dynamic or condenser) and place it outside the kick – this results in a more rounded and meaty sound. Don’t get any closer than 5-6" to the skin, though. Weight both kick drum mic stands with bricks so they don’t flop around.

Step 3: Use a dynamic cardioid mic, like this Shure SM57, for the snare batter head. Try to have it looking in and down onto the centre of the head. You’ll need to keep it outside or near the edge of the drum so that it doesn’t get in the drummer’s way, but this will sound better anyway. As an alternative, try having the mic looking horizontally across the snare.

Step 4: Again not essential, but a mic under the snare can help to bring out the rattle of the snares, as well as improving the fatness of the overall sound. If your overheads are good (see next page), you may end up using more of this in the mix than the top snare channel. If your audio interface has a phase reverse button, activate it for this mic’s channel.

Overheads

The most important microphones in our whole setup are the two overheads, which basically record the whole kit sound. Ideally, you’ll have a pair of large diaphragm condenser mics on tall stands two or three feet above the kit and about four feet apart. These are a ‘spaced pair’ of omni-directionals or cardioids. Omnis will give you more of the room sound, while cardioids achieve more focus.

Although this setup is common practice and can sound great, it’s not actually the easiest to get right, and it can also sound terrible.

The main problem is phase – you need to ensure that the sounds from your drums get to all of the overheads at roughly the same time. The more mics you use, the more complicated the phase relationships get and the less focused the sound can become, leading to a loss of punch and low frequencies in the recording.

Google the XY, ORTF and MS overhead miking techniques, all of which give very different sounding results – and all with just two condenser mics. Experiment to find out which suits your kit and room.

The Glyn Johns method

Mega-producer/engineer Glyn Johns has recorded many of the greats. Here’s his quick and economical kit miking method, which has become something of a standard over the years:

• Overhead 1 (cardioid condenser, panned left) is about 4-6" above the floor tom, facing the hi-hats across the snare.
• Overhead 2 (cardioid condenser, panned right) is about 2-3' above the kit, pointing down between the toms and snare
• Snare spot mic
• Kick spot mic.

Room mics, bottom snare mic and second kick mic are all optional. This method does depend on having a great-sounding kit and room, though, so it could be a bit unflattering to a home setup.

Below we’re going to use the two-mic overhead technique that’s become known as the ‘Recorderman’. It involves quite a close mic placement, and minimises the room sound in the overheads. Here’s how it’s done…

Getting the ambient mics right

Step 1: For overhead 1, mount a large diaphragm cardioid condenser (if possible) looking down on the snare drum from a height of roughly two drumsticks. This is a starting point that can be adjusted to tweak cymbal and room spill. This technique will give a tight sound, focused on the snare – to tighten the sound further, you could set a hyper-cardioid pattern.

Step 2: The second condenser (OH2) looks directly at the snare over the drummer’s right shoulder. To set the distance, make a loop of string starting at the centre of the kick, going up to the top overhead mic, looping round your finger, and then down to the centre of the snare. Keep the snare end in position and bring your finger back towards the second mic.

Step 3: In a dead or bad-sounding room, the ambience won’t be great, but it’s useful to set up an ambience mic some distance from the kit anyway, as we’ll see later. Even better is putting a mic up in an adjacent space that’s bright-sounding, like a bathroom, kitchen or corridor. This signal can be delayed to create the illusion of size.

Step 4: Even though we’ll be getting most of our sound from the overheads and kick mics, it’s a good idea to put dynamic mics on the toms in the same way we did the top of the snare. If nothing else, these can be used to trigger tom samples if your tom sound isn’t that great.

Getting a great recording

Step 1: Plug the mics into your audio interface. The overheads go to inputs 1 and 2 and will need 48v phantom power (unless you’re using ribbon mics – in which case, don’t touch that switch!). Kick in and out go to inputs 3 and 4, while snare top and bottom go to 5 and 6. The ambient mic (hopefully a condenser, so requiring phantom power) goes into 7, and the floor tom mic into 8.

Step 2: Get the drummer to beat the hell out of the kit. They always play louder on the actual takes, so don’t worry about getting too hot a signal – having the highest peaks spike at around -5dB is a good target. There’s something to be gained from clipping, but not on the way into the interface – keep it clean.

Step 3: Once your levels are sorted, it’s a good idea to run a test take to check for silly mistakes and any uninvited hum, hiss, clicks or crackles. You can also use the test recording to check the phase of the mics and ensure a fully fat sound on playback. Even though the theory of phase is complex, the practice is easy…

Step 4: Insert a trim or gain plugin into each of your eight drum channels. Bring up the first kick mic, followed by the second. When the two are balanced, try inverting the phase on the second kick channel (the left/right Phase Invert icons). Leave the button set where the sound is best.

Step 5: Now turn down the kicks and bring up the overheads, panned centre. Try inverting the phase of one of them. If the overheads sound fatter with just one channel phase inverted, leave it like that. Bring the kicks back in and blend them with the overheads. Change the phase on both the overheads now, and leave them set at wherever the kick sounds fattest.

Step 6: Balance in the top snare mic and switch the phase to whichever setting sounds fattest with the kick and overheads. Bring up the bottom snare mic and set the phase to the opposite of whatever the top is set to. Repeat this process with the floor tom and ambient mics. This is quick ’n’ dirty, but now you’re ready to record.

Quiet studio, please

You should now be ready to press the record button, safe in the knowledge that you have the sound of the drums completely nailed. Of course, there’s a whole bunch of stuff to do post recording to turn the raw drum takes into a mixed kit, but we’ll cover that in future features. First, though, we have to make sure we record everything we need.

There’s nothing worse than putting up your drum recordings, long after the drummer has packed up and left, only to find that the bottom snare mic hasn’t recorded or that your middle section has click track from the headphones spilling all over it. That’s why a test take is important; here are a few tips on how to get the most out of the session.

Setting up a rough live mix

Step 1: Although you won’t create your final drum sound until the mixdown, you’ll need to get your mix half-decent for recording. Here’s some CPU-friendly advice to help you get it right. Create two auxiliary sends and returns from the ambience track. Insert a delay plugin over the first return and set the L and R Delay times to 30ms and 60ms.

Step 2: Next, insert a room reverb over the second aux return set to around 0.6s Decay time. Compress this and add a harmonic distortion (we’ve used the Phatr FX again). This artificial space will help the kit sound more ‘finished’ while you’re tracking – and a more exciting sound will make your drummer play better.

Step 3: Take your individual drum channels and the two new aux returns and set their outputs to a new bus. Create a new aux return for this bus and call it ‘Kit master’. This is your main drum channel. Now create two or three more busses and returns for the rest of your recorded track stems (guitars, bass, vocals, etc).

Step 4: You should now have five or six ‘master’ faders, making it easy to create a good working balance and hear the drums properly in context. You can also create a separate sub-mix for the drummer by adding aux sends to the master faders and routing them discretely to the headphones output. To minimise latency, keep your audio interface buffer size as small as possible.

Looks like BIlly Joel is ready to step back into the limelight. The singer-songwriter took a back seat from music after being diagnosed with a brain disorder earlier this year but is now taking on interviews and is seemingly back on the promo trail.

And appearing in the bright spotlight of Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast, Joel pulled no punches when prodded and prompted by the show’s host.

The pair met ostensibly to promote Joel’s new two-part, five-hour HBO documentary, Billy Joel: And So It Goes, which itself is no stranger to revelation. The film contains details of Joel’s two suicide attempts in his early 20s and his subsequent high-profile divorces, alongside his decades-long wrestles with fame-plus-money-power-and-drugs.

And it seems that, with the documentary under his belt and following his recent bout of ill health (with a long and winding road to recovery ahead), Joel isn't bothered about offering his opinion on his fellow superstars. The Beatles included.

Prompted to pick his favourite double albums - “How about The White Album?” sets up Maher, serving up the admittedly divisive and frequently debated Beatles record - Joel takes the bait.

“I’m not a big fan of The White Album,” he begins. “Some people love it, but I hear it as a collection of half-assed songs that they didn’t finish writing because either they were too stoned or they didn’t care any more."

“I think John was disassociated at that time and Paul was carrying the weight,” he continues. “I think they almost broke up a couple of times, but it was all smoothed over for the ten years that they were famous. And sometimes they were more prolific and sometimes they weren’t. And I hear that in some of those things.”

“Which is a song I don’t like"

Elsewhere, Joel is pleasingly honest and frank about his own work too, playing down a Maher favourite, Tell Her About It, as "a song I don’t like. I was trying to do a Motown song. I was trying to be Diana Ross and The Supremes." He does recognise the genius of Uptown Girl, though: “It was an homage [to Frankie Valli]”.

“I opened for Frankie Valli in 1984 and I remember him saying how flattered and thrilled he was”, notes Maher.

And despite the brickbats earlier, Joel has nothing but praise for the Beatles and John Lennon when it comes to discussing his own Laura. “I was channelling John Lennon. It was Beatle-esque. I couldn’t deny it. That’s what I was going for.”

And back on the subject of double albums… The Who's Tommy? “There was a lot of filler on Tommy,” Joel concludes.

Billy Joel: And So It Goes is available to watch on HBO now.

It looks like, even after all these years (and with one big gig to go), Sharon Osbourne has lost none of her tenacity for making sure that Black Sabbath – and most specifically her husband Ozzy Osbourne – don’t get jerked around.

That’s the takeaway from her latest interview with Metal Hammer – just weeks ahead of the Back To The Beginning last ever Black Sabbath (and friends) celebration – in which she reveals the lengths she’s gone to to fight Ozzy’s corner, and that one band got dropped from the big name final blowout.

“I had a huge, huge, to-do with a manager over this celebration for Ozzy and Sabbath,” Osbourne reveals. “And it was probably the worst I’ve felt in years. And I don’t care what this person says about me, thinks about it, because he doesn’t know me. And he’s now going around making up bullshit lies because I threw his band off the bill.

“I don’t care what people say. Because do you know what? I don’t love them. I care about people who love me, what they say about me. You can’t care what an industry says, because you don’t love them, so how can it hurt you? It doesn’t.”

Inevitably, attention has turned to which band got the boot, with fans quickly pouncing on the recent announcement that the gig would be livestreamed to notice that Tool weren’t mentioned as part of the livestream line-up.

Given the timing of both this late-in-the-day poster revision and Osbourne’s revelations, Tool would appear to have been the victim of Osbourne’s ire.

After all this is the band whose own fans sued them after a disappointing festival performance.

Alternatively, in the interview, it's suggested that the boot-ee may have been Billy Corgan (someone who Osbourne has had run-ins with in the past): “Of course. Billy is a very, very bright, artistic person. I managed him and we fell out. I’m too confrontational and pushy for Billy.”

But no.

Or Iron Maiden? “I love Iron Maiden, it’s just the singer because he was so horribly disrespectful,” explains Osbourne. “But if you’re going to take Ozzy’s money, and play before him every night of a festival [the 2005 Ozzfest], and you’re bad-mouthing him to the crowd, you’ve got to pay. So I had him pelted with cans of baked beans that were open, and cut his sound.”

And Tool?

Well, following that initial streaming announcement, the band did post a link to that livestream on their socials (implying that they were on board) and news that an unnamed fan asking Ozzy Osbourne's Facebook account as to whether Tool were still on the bill earned an affirmative, soon spread around fan communities.

In addition, Tool's name was later updated to the streaming graphic and a representative from the band also confirmed to Loudwire that they were part of the bill.

However, at the time of writing Ozzy.com is now showing that gig listing minus Tool’s name…

And yet the official Back To The Beginning.com event page still features them.

A case of Ozzy being a bit off the pace?

Don’t worry. You can rely on us to keep you posted with more solid Tool in/out news coming soon…

It looks like the Wilsons and the rest of the recently reformed Heart just can’t get a break.

Firstly the band had to cancel and then reschedule their planned Royal Flush 50th anniversary tour earlier this year due to Anne undergoing treatment for cancer. Now, on the eve of their spring/summer An Evening With Heart tour, the band has had two vital, much-prized guitars stolen.

The band had just set off on their latest jaunt, with the tour beginning 31 May at the Hard Rock in Atlantic City and concluding on June 28 in Hollywood, Florida. They set up for their first gig and – unfortunately – left their gear unattended at the venue overnight.

By morning, a custom-built, one-of-a-kind purple sparkle baritone Telecaster with a hand-painted headstock, crafted specifically for Nancy Wilson had gone missing.

Likewise, a vintage 1966 Gibson EM-50 mandolin that band member Paul Moak has played for over 25 years.

“These instruments are more than just tools of our trade – they’re extensions of our musical souls,” said Nancy Wilson. “The baritone Tele was made uniquely for me, and Paul’s mandolin has been with him for decades. We’re heartbroken, and we’re asking for their safe return – no questions asked. Their value to us is immeasurable.”

A reward is being offered for any information leading to their return and given that they’re both pretty distinctive (see pics) it’s likely that someone will spot them.

If you have any knowledge of the theft or whereabouts of the instruments contact the band’s tour manager Tony Moon, at tonymoon@me.com.

PRODUCER WEEK 2025: Employing a musician to add some sparkle to your project will undoubtedly elevate your music, but there’s more to the process than simply hitting record.

There is genuinely nothing more gratifying than hearing your work performed by a skilled, live musician, but employing the right person - and ensuring you get the best out of them - requires more preparation than you may think.

Given the strengths that music technology can provide within the realm of most DAWs, you'd be forgiven for wondering why you might even want to get a live musician in in the first place.

The simple answer equates to the human condition; an organic recording of a live vocalist or instrumentalist will add an unquantifiable element to your track, which is often worth its weight in gold.

It's also worth noting that if you are working within the domain of acoustically-inspired samples or synthesisers, the addition of a live musician will fool the ear into thinking that more of your instruments are live than actually are.

When you get to the stage where you think you want to hire a live musician, choosing the right player for your recording is essential. This means that you’ll need to research what you want.

If you are writing material which is pure pop, you will likely want to find a vocalist that can provide the right amount of commercially-angled style you're after. Think of it this way; you wouldn't hire a bass player, when you actually want to record a flute, so selecting a specific musician with the right skills is your first major consideration.

If you're working to a budget, you may have friends that can help you out. This is always a nice idea, particularly if it’s a freebie, but it may come with musical limitations.

If you decide that you want to splash out on a professional, you are at liberty to pick and choose your muso, and there are plenty of musicians out there who specialise in all forms and styles of music.

Fees and Etiquette
The moment you cross the Rubicon to the professional domain, you need to bear in mind that it's not just a creative project - the people you're hiring are temporary employees - here to do a job for you.

Most professional musicians will want to perform at their very best, of course, but this is still a job for them. You cannot expect a hired professional to invest in your project to the same degree that you may.

By way of protection, the Musicians Union are an organisation with professional members, who publish guidelines for fees that should be charged, for corresponding session lengths.

The standard is to book a musician for a 3-hour recording session, which includes a short break half way through the session.

The rate for this session will differ, depending on the session nature.

Media/film sessions, pop sessions or library music sessions, all have their own session rates, and there are caveats upon what you can and can’t do within the session without paying more.

Hence, if your music placement is high-profile, it’ll be worth visiting the Musicians’ Union rates page to brush up on all the details.

They can advise on all aspects of musician hire, which extends to contractual obligation. If in doubt, contact them directly.

Now you’re at the stage of booking your musician, the next question is ‘what time’?

This obviously varies, but - take it from us - singers are not always at their best first thing in the morning, so a session slot in the afternoon or evening, will generally yield a better result if you’re tracking vocals.

Other musicians may have had gigs the night before, so may also appreciate a later start time.

Before the musician’s arrival, it's important that you get the workspace setup and prepared.

Placing the microphone in the same room as your DAW/control room can be better for quick communication, but it also means that you’ll need to work on headphones, or keep your studio monitoring very low.

If you have a second room to use as a live room, it may work better acoustically speaking, but it removes the immediacy of the producer/musician connection.

Either way, closed headphones for the musician are vital, along with a decent microphone stand that can adjust to their performance position.

Get everything setup, both in situ and on your DAW, before the session start time. Check that it’s all working, to avoid embarrassment and save time!

Make sure you have any materials, such as sheet music of lyrics readily to hand.

Reading music is a skill that most pros will have, and it’ll allow you to get far more done in a session.

If music theory isn’t your strong suit, then tablature and chord charts are other alternatives that speed up musical direction.

Print any lyrics in a nice large and clear font, while trying to avoid uncomfortable page turns. Rustling paper may be captured by a live microphone, although the presence of a music stand will assist.

It's possible that your musician will turn up early for the session, giving them time to warm-up, exchange pleasantries, and take advantage of any beverages on offer!

Singers love a cup of hot water with a slice of lemon in it. Alcohol, on the other hand, is not advisable in a professional scenario, but all musicians like coffee, don’t they?

Your musician will expect to start singing, playing or recording on the dot of your session time.

If you don’t start on time, that's not the musician’s problem, and they will still expect to finish at the agreed time.

Should the session finish before then, the musician will not be refunding any part of the fee.

If they'e amenable, you could use the time you’re paying for by trying alternative takes - or recording more music!

Hitting Record
The meat of the process really starts when you hit record, with convention dictating that you should start recording immediately.

In truth, it always takes a little bit of time to get things set up and make sure levels are behaving correctly - even if you’ve spent significant time prepping.

It's important to bear in mind the very 'humanness', passion or performance flair that you're after is often spontaneous. It's true that some of the best performance moments tend to occur in the very first bars of recording.

The sooner you hit record, the greater the chance you have of capturing magic. So even if the sound isn't quite right, be prepared to bottle lighting. Though it might mean you have to spend longer with the take in the mixing stage.

It’s worth spending time focussing on microphone placement to achieve the sound you require.

Elements such as the ‘proximity effect', (which induces lower frequencies the closer you get to a microphone) are one of many sonic considerations that may affect mic positioning.

Now you're on the way, keep a copy of the music or lyrics in front of you, so that you can not only direct the musician, but also make performance notes. These are useful for highlighting moments that need additional attention.

Thanks to the ease with which ‘takes’ can be ‘comp’d’ (compiled), it’s simple to revisit any anomalies for a further take.

In terms of getting in the zone, make sure that your musician hears an adequate run-in before they start recording.

A two bar count-in is often ideal, as it provides a moment to get into the right headspace - as well as physically take a breath!

As the musician settles-in, they’ll become more comfortable with the material at hand, and you may find that they do something different on a second, third or fourth take, which really enhances your track.

If your track is comprised of sections, such as verses and chorus, it can often be a great idea to work on one section at a time.

The continual repeating of a section will yield familiarity, and probably gain a better performance with each pass.

Professionals are very used to accepting notes and instruction from a producer. If there is something specific that you want, or something that they’re doing that you think isn’t working, then don't be afraid to tell them. The way you interact with your musician should always be from a stance of ‘respectful encouragement’, which will always extract the best performance. A laugh and a joke also goes a very long way - as it does in life in general!

By working through the format of your song or composition, you will eventually have a complete take, ready for compiling and editing, before mixing.

It's important to listen to the takes carefully, because you may miss things during the recording process. When you want to listen back, it's worth inviting the musician to listen with you.

They may hear things that you don't, and also have an opinion on whether they could do a better performance. You should take their advice, as they probably know what they're doing.

Thanks to modern DAW-based production, many mistakes can be rectified through editing. However, you should offer your musician the opportunity to perform to a degree that they are happy with, before going headlong into correcting any errors.

The two main elements which you should listen for are tuning (relating to individual notes being in tune), and timing (which relates to placement within the beats of a bar).

But beward, adding tuning-correction software or quantising to a fixed beat or note, could sanitise the reality of the performance and negate the whole point of hiring a live musician in the first place.

So, it's worth going the extra mile and really making sure you’ve captured the performance you want.

Remember, by actively working and encouraging your musician, you will undoubtedly get a better performance. If they feel relaxed, timings will feel better, and this will translate to a better recorded performance.

Once you think you have everything that you need from your recording process, the very next thing you should do is immediately back up your audio files.

We are dealing with technology here, and while it's reliable most of the time, it can sometimes let you down when you least expect it.

Trust us.

There’s nothing more embarrassing than calling up the person you’ve spent a day working with, and asking them to come back in and redo it, just because your host SSD has given up!

Finally - enjoy the process of working with a real human being. These days, production can feel quite a lonely pursuit, but working with real musicians can spur much creativity.

Suddenly, your music feels much more alive than it did when it was just a project file within your DAW. That's all down to the human factor.

As a special Valentine's gift, Universal Audio is giving away a free version of its classic 1176 peak limiter/compressor plugin. We have all the details here on how to get it and use it in your mixes!

Yes, you might consider roses, chocolates or expensive champagne as your ideal Valentine's gifts, but here at MusicRadar, we'd rather choose free plugins as the ideal gifts for our partners – which might explain why we're single – and there's none better than this special offering from Universal Audio: the mighty UA 1176 for free!

If you haven't experienced the magic of the Universal AudioA/UREI 1176 peak limiter/compressor, then now is most definitely the time. As a special Valentine's gift, Universal Audio is making a version of its plugin 1176 free for a limited time, and we have all the hands-on advice to make the most of this fantastic offer, and get some incredible 1176 magic going in your mixes.

First up, why is the original hardware 1176 so revered? Like a lot of vintage gear this happened almost by accident as the original unit was designed as a workhorse limiter/compressor, with no legendary status in mind. The original unit was released in 1968 by Bill Putnam, an expert in tube-based audio preamps and compressors, who was just discovering the joys of the all-new (for the time) solid-state transistor technology.

His new 1176 was a solid-state version of his original 175B/176 tube compressor – the '1176' name being a shortened version of the original. Unlike other compressors of the time it was loaded with extras like Attack and Release controls and four compression ratio options: 4;1, 8:1, 12:1 and 20:1.

These became the 1176's most famous feature when engineers discovered that dialling them all in simultaneously resulted in a steep compression and aggressive quality on certain instruments and mixes that became known as The British Sound.

This became one of the 1176's biggest calling cards, along with its fast and aggressive character, and the original hardware quickly became one of the most in-demand studio tools, with many famous users. These included engineer/producer Bruce Swedien who insisted on using 1176s when recording Michael Jackson's vocals for landmark albums like Thriller and Off The Wall, while Andy Johns certainly helped make that 'British sound' by dialling in all the ratio settings for both Led Zeppelin and Free recordings.

Putnam had interests in lots of early audio brands so used both the UREI and Universal Audio names on his gear – along with many others – so the 1176 was blessed with both names throughout its history, which turned out to be a remarkably long one.

There have been 11 versions of the 1176 released since 1968, the first three (A, AB, and B) known as 'Bluestripe thanks to their distinctive coloured facias. Versions C, D, E, F and G were called 'Blackface, with Revision C adding low noise circuitry, hence the '1176LN' name.

The 'Silverface' H was version 9, while Revision 10 is the current Universal Audio 1176LN model, and is used by such luminary producers as Tony Maserati (Beyonce, Alicia, Keys). Version 11 was a very limited edition (500 units) model that UA released the limited edition 1176 AE (Anniversary Edition) which has different ratios: 2:1, 4:1, 8:1, and 20:1; plus a slower attack time setting.

The original 1176 has become one of those legendary pieces of studio history that has an equally legendary price-tag. The latest revision 10 will set you back £3,000/$3.500 for a new unit, but if you want an original, you are going to have to start saving with the earlier the revision meaning the higher price tags. We've seen a Rev B for sale for £16,000/$18,000, while a Rev D is a snip at £7,500/$8,500!

The 1176 in software

Luckily, you don't need to pay top dollar for an original hardware version of the 1176, because you can now enjoy its magic as a plugin, and who better than the original developer's Universal Audio as the team behind it? The company's 1176 Classic Limiter Collection is hands-down the best way to get the 1176 sound into your mixes as it features not one but three versions of the original hardware: the Rev A, E and limited AE.

Well, when we say 'hands-down the best', there is – for a limited time only – one better way to get the 1176 sound, and that's with the free Valentine's Day version from Universal Audio. It has all the features of the original hardware and software versions, bar a couple of extras on the Attack and Release dials, which we explain below.

You simply set levels with the Input and Output dials, choose your compression setting, and it's easy to create dramatic or subtle compression effects on anything from beats to vocals.

We're going to show you how to recreate some vintage 1176 magic using this free version now, so head on over to the Universal Audio website and download it, install it and get ready for our tutorials!

Now you have it and, presumably have it installed, it's time to get dial up some 1176 magic.

Tutorial 1: The Dr Pepper Effect

In the 1960s, Dr Pepper ran an ad in the US saying that its drink should be enjoyed at the hours of 10am, 2pm and 4pm to keep yourself nicely topped up with its sugary ingredients. It was a good way of selling drinks but also – and heaven only knows who made the connection – those numbers made up some decent settings for the 1176, which became known as the Dr Pepper trick!

The first thing to note is that the 1176 has reversed Attack and Release controls compared to most other compressors, in that they give you the fastest setting as you dial right. In other words you get the slowest attack and release character dialling them left. With that in mind, set your first Dr Pepper setting at 10 o clock for the Attack dial. That's a value of around 3 on the dial (see above).

If you have a sugary-pop drink to hand, and it's 2pm your time, now is probably time to take a sip as we enter the second value in our Dr Pepper mode; that's 2pm on the Release dial, around a value of 5.

Take a final swig – feels good right? It's 4pm and that final boost of the day comes by way of the 4:1 ratio setting – 4pm, geddit? So we end up with the Attack at 10 o' clock, the Release at 2 o' clock and the Ratio at 4 o' clock.

You will have to balance your input and output dials to make sure that the gain settings are equivalent and that you can hear the difference. The end result is that the sound is more aggressive with these settings and it certainly allows instruments like the acoustic guitar and vocals to punch through the mix more, adding top end and ambience.

Tutorial 2: The classic 'All Buttons In' mode

The 'All Buttons In' setting or 'British Mode' on the 1176 was discovered by an engineer who accidentally pressed all the ratio buttons in on an original hardware unit. Clumsy, maybe – and what on earth were they doing? However, the result was worth it, as the end result was a lovely up-front sound. First up, press the 4:1 compression setting.

Now press Shift and click on the 20:1 ratio and all of the buttons should go in. Again, you might have to set up the Input and Output dials to keep the gain settings similar, so hear the impact of the 1176 before and after. Keep the Attack and Release dials in the middle to start with.

The result is that the overall compression works between 12 and 20:1, depending on your source signal, and the sound is very overdriven. While Dr Pepper adds a bit of bite, this is more of a colourful, pumping sound. On a drum break, for example, it is a 'smearing' effects where the transients become more blurred. Here we have the Rev A version of UA's 1176 with the Dr Pepper Settings.

Trying it on a kick and you an even more dramatic pumping effect, but experiment with the Release dial and Input level, in particular, to enhance it. It's a very distinctive effect that can add punch and character to pretty much anything – and is best used as a parallel processor – but is most evident on these percussive sounds.

Finally, if you push the Attack dial all the way to the right on an 1176, it is effectively switched off, forcing a ratio of 1:1 and meaning that the 1176 is simply used as a preamp and giving you a little magic colour. An 1176 is well worth trying just for this, although the free version doesn't have this option, so just push the Attack dial as far as you can to the right.

Lady Gaga has gone on the record revealing the story and inner workings of her recent hit Disease, the lead-off single from forthcoming new album LG7.

Gaga has been working on LG7 in amongst her recent movie projects and soundtracks, being constructed in many famous studios including Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La.

"Shangri-La is just down the road from where I live so when I have an idea on the piano I can go there and record it,” she explains. “We made LG7 at Shangri-La and I would joke that Rick Rubin produced the album, but he wasn’t there, but like his spirit was there. But I go to Woodshed, I go to Dragonfly, I sometimes go to Henson… The Village… I’ve nested in all these studios.”

While it’s not made clear where the recording is taking place Gaga reveals that she did the bulk of the work on the album at home, with a newly equipped studio. “Micheal [Polansky, her partner] built a home studio for Valentine’s Day. He said ‘I have a surprise for you’ and he turned his office into a music studio. It’s kinda romantic,” she says.

Diving into the track she explains its origins. Operating the computer with Logic playing via an SSL Matrix 2 desk she outlines the backing track of drums and dual basslines supplied by producer Cirkut that inspired the track.

“For Disease the energy of the sound is where I wanted to start the album. It’s like diving headfirst into an ice cold pool of water,” she says. “With electronic music there are lots of interesting ways to manipulate the voice, sometimes using [Antares] Autotune, sometimes using [Celemony] Melodyne, in this case we used [Soundtoys] Microshift. It widened the sound and helped make me and the music one.”

Going in deeper we hear that the track is propped up by plenty of synth squeals and long reverb tails that – without the rhythm track to pin them down – slide around, being unquantised but obviously placed to perfection.

“I thought ‘This is a killer dark pop record. We have to work on this.’ And I knew we needed a big chorus with a chord progression, so for that we went to the piano,” she explains. “Then when we went back to the track we realised we had to build it around the song. There’s no one way of making music that’s ever the same. I have to do what the song is telling me to do.”

“A magical part is this side-chain with the bass,” she demonstrates, playing the throbbing bass of the chorus which pulses in and out with the kick drum. “I wanted it to feel like the human being singing it was about to explode,” she says.

“We probably did about 40 mixes of Disease. Some were warm and softer but it started to lose its unwieldiness. But you know when it sounds right. At some point it just feels right.”

“You can’t push sound and you can’t push music if you're not willing to try new things. Especially with the bass on this song. We took a lot of ‘wrong’ choices.”

Gaga is particularly proud of the track’s chorus-reprising breakdown, being “something that I used to do” on her earlier hits. “Circuit wrote it for the chorus but I played it on the piano to make it really creepy and acoustic,” she says, soloing the dark, haunting piano sound below the song's moody interlude.

And there’s a touching moment when she beams with visible delight while soloing her own ultra-thick “Queen-style” backing vocals. “I guess that’s what I’m known for,” she bashfully admits. “Queen vocals, Bowie guitar… I guess you pull from what you love.”

And all throughout the rhythm is given a human element with gasps and screams. “I did a track for Cirkut where I was screaming and making little noises and he sampled them and added them to the record,” she explains.

All in all it’s a great insight into how she’s making music and the unusual choices and textures at play in crafting one of the year’s most interesting electronic tracks.

Looks like Gaga just can’t stop searching for the next level and pushing the needle into the red.

“I was making music like who I wanted to be. Now I’m making music like who I am now.”

RECORDING WEEK 2024: The art of audio engineering is more democratised than ever. The early days of Soundcloud rap and bedroom pop were nothing compared to the ubiquity of audio equipment today – a levelling of the playing field that grants more immediate access to recording music and audio than ever before.

Professional studio environments remain the ideal environments for recording, from the wellsprings of talent working within them to the hundreds of thousands invested in acoustic treatment and top-flight tech. Ultimately, though, the ways in which these incomparable spaces get their audio into a DAW are equivalent to the ways we do so at home, in DIY spaces or even on the road.

This is to say that the audio interface is a critical piece of recording equipment in practically every environment. It is a catalyst, and one that serves a huge variety of different disciplines within music, audio, and recording. Your own interface could be the brains for any number of highly-useful setups – but what are these setups?

What follows are some examples of just how varied recording rig setups can be, despite using the same core tools – and, within them, some considerations for how to build up your own rig, in service of similar ambitions. These examples aren’t prescriptive, nor are they comprehensive; consider them jumping-off points for exploring different workflows in the same broad church.

1. Recording bands

• What you’ll need
• 8-input and/or ADAT-enabled audio interface: Universal Audio Apollo X8p, Focusrite Clarett 4Pre
• ADAT expander: Focusrite Clarett+ OctoPre, Behringer XLR ADA8200 Ultragain
• XLR snake: Pulse 12-Way XLR Multicore Stage Box, Sub Zero 12 Channel Drum Stage Box
• Headphone mixer: SubZero HPA800, Behringer MX400

When recording bands, two things are key: ergonomic efficiency, and a truckload of inputs. Whether or not you’re recording a band live, you’ll be multitracking; though you can get a great drum capture with three mics (yes, we know The Beatles did it with one), a five-or-more mic setup gives you separation, character and options.

Eight inputs would be a great starting point, but more is better – and you may be able to get more if your interface is ADAT-enabled, and hence capable of eight-input expansion via a single optical cable. My DIY studio rig involves a Focusrite Clarett 4Pre and an ADAT-coupled Focusrite OctoPre Mk II, which together provide 16 channels of audio.

Professional studios will use XLR snakes to extend the accessibility of their inputs, in many cases hardwired into the walls of the studio. In my case, an XLR snake provides access to 12 of their 16 channels. Four are routed first to an old-school mixing desk for preamps and EQ colour, before reaching the 4Pre via patch bay; the remaining eight go straight to the OctoPre. The snake doesn’t just centralise various (and otherwise difficult-to-reach) inputs, but also makes it possible to throw said accessibility out to different spaces altogether.

Unless you have a professionally-designed, truly sound-isolated control room, studio headphones are necessary when tracking to minimise bleed from audio playback while recording.

Of course, you’ll need more than one set, not just for the people trying to record but also for guests listening in alongside you. Solutions for this range from cheap to ch-eezus-christ-that’s-pricey, with pro studios investing quad figures into headphone monitoring systems that give everyone unique control over their headphone mixes. My relatively meagre budget saw me using a Behringer headphone mixer, to split one available headphone out into four.

2. Composing soundtracks

• What you’ll need
• Audio interface with 6+ outputs: RME Fireface UCX-II, Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 3rd Gen, Audient ORIA
• Surround sound/spatial audio monitoring: 5-7 Genelec 8010s + Genelec 7040A, Neumann Immersive 5.1 Systems, Waves Nx Head Tracker
• MIDI keyboard/controllers: Arturia KeyLab Essential 88 Mk 3, Expressive E Touche SE

If you’re more of a composer, you’ll have less of a need for recording space, microphones and outboard equipment – but this doesn’t mean the average composer’s recording rig is austere. With regard to interfaces, while you don’t need one with shedloads of inputs, you’ll still want one with a shedload of outputs.

5.1 surround sound is the predominant format of choice for film directors and studios, and spatial audio is becoming increasingly popular in the video game industry. A composer’s interface, then, will often need to service a surround sound rig, feeding at least six monitor speakers from its outs. For those that can’t afford to build a spatial-audio cocoon for themselves, there are some elegant tech-y solutions in the headphone space involving head-tracking equipment and spatial audio plugins.

Save for a microphone or two for capturing instruments live, the vast majority of compositional work today happens in the box – so a composer’s toolkit ought to be rife with methods of communicating with the box. A MIDI keyboard is a must at minimum, and all the better if it’s 88 keys or so. If you’ve the budget, a standalone modulation controller can make all the difference in adding dynamics, or humanising sterile samples.

3. Mixing and mastering

• What you’ll need
• High-fidelity audio interface with at least 4 outputs: Audient ORIA, Antelope Audio Goliath, Arturia AudioFuse 16Rig
• Outboard rack hardware: API 2500+, Warm Audio EQP-WA, Ruper Neve Designs Shelford Channel
• Active nearfield monitors: 2 x Adam Audio A7, 2 x Genelec 8030C
• Auxiliary monitor(s): Avantone Mixcube
• Monitor interface: Mackie Big Knob, Audient Nero

Mixing audio is not a process entirely removed from the recording of it; the majority of pro studio set-ups are start-to-finish rigs on which records can be both recorded and mixed, even if only for ease. But while some gear is shared between the two steps, there are some pieces of equipment which lend themselves more to mixing than to recording.

Monitor speakers, for instance, are highly important throughout the making of a record – but recording engineers don’t strictly need multiple sets of speakers to reference incoming audio. Mixing and mastering engineers, however, do – to check blind spots in their mixes, to switch things up and prevent ear fatigue, and to ensure finished records sound as good as possible from every sound source.

A popular brand for auxiliary reference speakers is Avantone, whose aptronymic Mixcube speakers are a precise, low-distortion analogue to the thinner, honky sound of consumer hi-fi sound sources. A standalone monitor interface like the Mackie Big Knob can be placed after your interface and route your audio to different sets, meaning you can A/B your mixes and identify problems with the toggle of a button.

Outboard gear is a contentious topic all of its own, whether you’re a hardcore hardware recordist that prints everything straight to 2” tape or a software-embracing mix engineer that’s sold all their Pultecs. My position is that there’s never not a place for outboard in the mix process, and that your investment in – and mastery of – your own outboard rack could set your mixes apart from the rest. Tubes and transformers add ineffable colour, while hardware compressors make you think a little more carefully about which knobs you’re turning and why.

4. Recording your modular synth rig

• What you’ll need
• Audio interface with four outputs: Focusrite Clarett+ 4Pre, Behringer UMC404HD
• (Optional) Analogue mixer, or mixer module: Soundcraft EPM6, Doepfer A-138s Mini Stereo Mixer Module, Worng Electronics SoundStage II
• Attenuator module(s): Erica Synths Link 5x, Dreadbox Utopia
• Master clock module: ALM Pamela’s PRO Workout
• Mult module: Intellijel Designs Mult, Doepfer A-180-2 Multiples

Modular synth rigs are a unique challenge to record. Though not expressly difficult, some interesting approaches are required – whether in service of capturing ideas as they happen, or purposefully enshrining a song or movement. Modular synth rigs, for one, are loud.

Consider that +4dBu is a conventional standard for line-level audio, and a level for which most professional audio interfaces are designed to receive comfortably; modular audio outputs can extend well beyond 13dBu. This isn’t impossibly loud, and many modern interfaces are happy enough receiving these levels – but if you aren’t sure, you could risk clipping your audio at best, and damaging circuitry at worst. Even if your interface can handle modular audio levels, there won’t be much headroom to work with. As such, you might benefit from investing in some attenuator modules to insert before you send audio out.

Another challenge relates to timing; if you’re doing anything but recording a live performance start-to-finish straight to stereo, you’ll want your DAW and your modular rig to be synced to one another – which brings us to clocks. Most of us will be familiar with clocks via MIDI, where 5-pin-DIN-ing different instruments together ensures they listen to the same BPM from a nominated clock source.

This is certainly an option for modular users, but not the best one with respect to recording. An unfortunate reality here is that, while MIDI clocking would be a simple and possibly elegant approach to getting your DAW and modular singing from the same sheet, the USB protocol is imprecise for such purposes. For a foolproof, steady and reliable clock, you need to be thinking audio. This means generating a square-wave audio clock in your DAW, and sending it via an interface output to the ‘clock in’ of a master clock module (or straight to a mult).

5. Podcasting

• What you’ll need
• Eight-input interface with preamps and phantom power: Solid State Logic Pure Drive Octo, Allen & Heath CQ12T
• Multi-input hardware compressors: DBX 1046 Quad Compressor, Behringer MDX4600 V2
• Headphone mixer: SubZero HPA800, Behringer MX400

Podcasting is one of the least-involved potential rigs on this list, if only for the simplicity of the task at hand – quality, independent captures of voices in conversation. As with recording bands, inputs are your friend – though you’ll only need as many as your maximum number of guests. All of these inputs will need preamps and phantom power, though, in order to get that sonorous radio-style vocal presence for each guest. If you’ve the budget, eight channels of hardware compression can do a lot of heavy lifting for smoothing out and normalising vocals too.

The real trick in setting up a podcasting rig is providing enough headphones for everyone: hosts, guests and producers. Much as with recording bands, inexpensive headphone amplifier-cum-splitters are the most economical option – and make adjusting levels for participants a relative breeze too.

• Get more recording stories and features at Recording Week 2024 here!

RECORDING WEEK 2024: The 1176 – by UREI or Universal Audio, take your pick – is one of the most revered pieces of studio gear. The peak limiter/compressor was released in 1968 by Bill Putnam who had been replacing the older tube technology in his range of compressors and preamps with the then all-new solid-state transistor technology. In fact, the name came after Putnam introduced the FET transistor technology into his 175B/176 tube compressor, the resulting ‘1176’ being a cut-down version of the original.

The 1176 featured all-new Attack and Release controls (though these provide their fastest times with the knobs turned right – contrary to most modern compressors), with the Attack time going right down to 20 microseconds. It also famously provided four compression ratio buttons: 4;1, 8:1, 12:1 and 20:1. We say ‘famously’ because you could press them all simultaneously for the ‘All Buttons In’ effect which added an aggressive and steep compression quality, providing what became known as ‘The British Sound’.

Compared to a tube compressor’s warmer sound, the 1176’s clear, aggressive, and fast character quickly won it fans across the production world, with its features particularly suited to vocals, drums and bass guitars. Famous users include Bruce Swedien who used it when recording Michael Jackson’s vocals, and Andy Johns who made the most of the All Buttons In feature when recording Led Zeppelin. That said, there are probably few producers and engineers who haven’t employed – or lusted after – the 1176 at some point or another, such is its legendary status in the production world.

Is it UREI or is it Universal Audio when it comes to the 1176? It’s actually both and to understand this, you need to get your head around the rather complex story of Bill Putnam’s company history. But to get that across we’d need a book as Putnam Senior has been associated with, or owned, lots of vintage companies including Universal Audio, United Recording Electronics Industries (that’s UREI), Universal Recording Corporation, Studio Electronics and Teletronix.

Anyway, fortunately, all you need to know is that when the 1176 was released in 1968, the Universal Audio name was used, but the UREI name was dominant so also added to the branding on Revision D of the unit, although the UA name was dropped at Revision H. So already we have both names used on various revisions.

In 1999, Putnam’s sons, Putnam Jnr and James Putnam acquired the Universal Audio brand and you know what happened next: lots of (excellent) software models of just about every piece of vintage studio gear ever made and the resumption of the 1176 (among others) in hardware, now with the UA brand name. So, as you can see – and quite confusingly – both names have been variously used many times.

Revision history – what you need to know

There have been no less than 11 versions of the 1176, the first three revisions (A, AB, and B) all called ‘Bluestripe’, with a distinctive ‘blue stripe’ on the front fascia. Revision C was the first of five versions (C, D, E, F and G) to be called ‘Blackface’. Revisions C, D and E are often cited as the best models to aim for as they featured new low noise circuitry, hence the often used ‘1176LN name’.

The next revision (H) was called ‘Silverface’ down to the brushed aluminium front plate, and with this version, the Universal Audio name was removed leaving the UREI brand name. Revision 10 is the new Universal Audio 1176LN, so features the same low noise circuitry from Revision C, D, and E, widely regarded as the best of all versions. Finally, UA released the limited edition 1176 AE (Anniversary Edition) with the ability to switch between various revisions. Only 500 of these units were built but this v11 is the (so far) latest one you can buy (if you can track one down).

Software models

As with any classic piece of vintage studio gear, you’re not going to want to pay big bucks for an original, nor probably the better part of three grand for a newer version. But fear not, because as with any classic piece of vintage studio gear, there are plenty of exacting emulations out there.

So on the software side, take your pick from many. Universal Audio has its UA 1176 Classic Limiter Collection bundle (£299), which is inevitably considered the best by many producers. Almost as inevitable is a Waves version, the CLA-76 ($149). Relative newcomers Pulsar Audio has its 1178 (€149) which it says is a perfectly emulated and enhanced FET compressor.

Purafied Audio comes in with a cheaper emulation at just £77 and ‘packs the punch of the real deal’. Purple Audio’s MC77 is one of the most highly-regarded versions (and one of the oldest and best looking). It costs a whopping $249 but as with many of our stated prices, look out for deals (whisper: it’s currently $25).

Back to the bigger developers and we’ll finish with IK Multimedia’s Black 76 Limiting Amplifier which comes in at €99, and Arturia’s Comp FET-76 (also €99). Certainly, with the latter, we’d recommend taking a look at the company’s FX Collection 5 for a better deal where €499 buys you not only the FET-76 but 33 other plugins. We’ll close with Softube’s FET Compressor MK-2 which it calls “a ground-up remake of an eternal favourite”. We say ‘close’ but we could go on as these are just the highlights of a world of software 1176s, and, as ever, do check your DAW plugins for any suspiciously 1176-looking emulations.

Of any freeware options out there, we’d say just go for Analogue Obsession’s FET-ish. There are almost certainly more out there but this one has a great rep and is available as a Mac plugin (unlike a lot of freeware). There is also a FET bundle of four plugins available from the same developer, although that might set you back a huge five bucks on a subscription.

Other modern hardware 1176s

There are, incredibly, almost as many modern hardware clones of the 1176 as there are software emulations. Purple Audio has one of each so we’ll kick off with its rather fab-looking MC77 (£1,899) which is based on the Revision E 1176.

Hairball Audio makes kits of just about every 1176 revision ever made, each one selling for around $600, and is one of the not-so-best-kept secrets of the production world, although you will need some electronic skills to put them together. Ready-made, the Black Lion Audio’s Blue Stripe is considered one of the better modern recreations and comes in at a reasonable £899. Lindell Audio also does an even better-priced hardware version with its Lin76 which comes in at an incredible £450. Finally on the hardware emulation front is Warm Audio’s WA76, which is another well-liked recreation and at just $699, a very reasonably priced one.

These are all hardware clones though, of course – and as ever, there are more out there made by smaller boutique companies – but if you want the real deal, you can still get it. No, we’re not talking about buying an original – which will cost you from around £5,000 (which is still pretty reasonable for a piece of vintage gear) – but a new 1176 that UA continues to manufacture. The Universal Audio 1176 LN is based on the original C, D and E versions and is as close to the original as you could ask for. Mind you it’s not cheap at around £2,600 but still at least half the price of an original model.

How to use the 1176: from some basic vocals and Dr Pepper settings to the infamous All Buttons In trick

We’ll start by using a Waves CLA76 to level vocals and it’s important to note that there won’t be any exact settings as vocals can vary so much, but a slow release and middling attack can be a good starting point with a high ratio to home in on the results but reduce this for more subtlety.

These are popular settings – Attack at around 3 and Release around 5 – to bring vocals out a little more in a mix, with the Ratio set at 4. Note we’ve switched to the Blacky on this one but the Bluey is just as good for vocals. These are known as the Dr Pepper settings as they were used on a Dr Pepper ad!

For more instant fun, try the infamous ‘All Buttons In’ mode. Here engineers went against the instructions, pushing all the Ratio buttons in simultaneously to create a more ‘British sound’. It’s particularly good on drums, adding instant aggression.

It’s also good for lead guitar and bass. Here we have the setting applied to a lovely bass sound and it brings out some of the low end, this time less aggressively.

With bass sounds and vocals, another common All Buttons In approach to try is having your Attack and Release controls set at maximum (fastest). This adds a grittier sound to either. Here we’re showing off with our plugin collection by loading up Arturia’s Comp FET-76.

Try the previous settings on drums but be careful with your Input and Output levels. It adds proper clout and character and makes you realise how important the All Buttons In feature of the 1176 has been in its history, and why it’s such a legendary piece of studio gear.

• Get more recording stories and features at Recording Week 2024 here!

RECORDING WEEK 2024: When we record, our primary tasks are to capture both the performance and sounds that we want. To that end, it’s not unusual to spend some time adjusting mic positions and also EQing and maybe compressing the sounds we’re recording on the way into our recording system.

Nevertheless, unless we’re feeling super-confident about the sounds we want to hear, and how they’ll work together as the track production progresses, then hitting the EQ or compression hard at the recording stage can be a big gamble.

Throw a compromised monitoring environment into the equation, or a situation where we can only record directly into our interface as we have no inline EQ chain, and the options become even more limited.

The upshot of this is that it’s quite easy to end up with a build-up of frequencies we don’t really need and as we layer up more overdubs and tracks the problem only gets worse, resulting in our mix sounding muddy, undefined and lacking punch.

But what do we actually mean by muddy? Most typically we’re talking about the low mid frequencies (about 200Hz to 500Hz) and you’ll also hear this frequency area referred to as boxy or thick. But muddiness can also come from too much build up in the low frequencies, particularly if you have kick and bass sounds fighting for dominance.

The important thing to remember is these frequencies and the low mids in particular exist in many sounds, providing fullness and weight, and at the right levels are vital for a well balanced mix.

In this tutorial we’ll work through ways to resolve this issue, starting with establishing which tracks and frequencies are causing the problem. We’ll then hone in on the typical frequency areas of concern, looking at various different solutions.

Step 1: Finding the cause

Our ears will have told us we have a problem with muddiness, and our next job is to pinpoint what is causing it. Multiple tracks of vocals or layers of synth pads can easily be the culprit. But also look at doubled sounds. A DI and mic pairing on bass or electric guitar for example.

Step 2: Sound sleuthing

If you’re struggling to find the problem instruments, try muting tracks or groups of tracks. Take a methodical approach to reveal the problem, which you can then focus on. If you’re still struggling to hear the frequency region or differentiate the elements then try temporarily adding a low pass filter at about 500Hz to your mix output or individual tracks.

Step 3: Deeper analysis

One further tool that can be really handy and confirm your initial findings are frequency analysers. We recommend you use them on both your mix bus and individual tracks to get the most accurate overall picture. Conveniently, they’re often integrated into your EQ with pre and post EQ analysis, which is handy once you start EQing.

Step 4: Bear your genre in mind

Finally, different styles of music have quite specific norms when it comes to the frequency balance of different instruments. In riff-heavy rock music for example the low mids may be dominated by guitar and bass, whereas in R&B this region may be all about vocals and beats. Understand your genre and use some suitable references.

Step 5: The solutions

Before we get into EQ and dynamic solutions, it’s important to check the balance between elements. This is a process that will continue as the track is mixed to achieve the best frequency balance. Nevertheless, at the outset it’s worth checking that you can’t resolve any muddiness simply by balancing your tracks slightly differently.

Step 6: Eliminate unwanted lows

Many sounds don’t have significant low frequencies or we don’t need them in the balance. Here the simplest solution is to just use a high pass filter. Start with a 12dB/octave slope and the frequency at about 350Hz. Adjust the cut off frequency to taste and select a steeper slope if required. Copy the same plugin to multiple tracks.

Step 7: Fine tuning your EQ

Sometimes the high-pass filter approach can be too aggressive. For a more finessed option that reduces the low mid frequencies from a frequency point downwards use a low shelf cut. Once again start with the frequency at about 350Hz and adjust the Q setting to select how steep the EQ curve is.

Step 8: Try a tilt EQ

Our final EQ suggestion for muddiness is to use a tilt EQ. This can be a great solution for overall mixes or sub mixes where you feel the sound just needs a nudge in the right direction. The tilt EQ boosts the highs and cuts the lows around a frequency pivot and used carefully is great for reducing muddiness.

Step 8: Create space for your kick

As mentioned, sometimes muddiness comes from the low frequencies and specifically competition between kick and bass sounds. Here we can try simple EQ as discussed above, and one solution is to notch out a frequency for the kick drum from the bass sound. Here ours it at about 100Hz

Step 10: Try a tilt EQ

A more finessed approach and one that allows you to balance competing sounds as required is a side chained dynamic EQ. Taking the same frequency we used in the previous step but actually sidechaining it from the kick means that we’re better accommodating the dynamic nature of the problem.

Problems solved!

Get more recording stories and features at Recording Week 2024 here!

Jared James Nichols stopped off at GuitarPoint in Frankfurt and did as any guitar nut would do in his position and tried out a whole bunch of vintage electric guitars with the German gear emporium filming it all for posterity.

It’s a proven formula. Give a pro like Nichols an guitar with some old-school mojo and stories behind it, a warmed-up tube amp, turn him loose on it and shoot it for YouTube. We are fully here for that.

But the sight of the Gibson Brand Ambassador and Epiphone signature artist applying his patented Blues Power fingerstyle to a Fender Stratocaster that was once owned by the late, great Lester Williams, is something extra. And this guitar is special.

This guitar is an O.G. Strat from 1954 with a hardtail bridge and all the signs of a guitar that’s spent night after night in a smoke-filled venue. Of course, banning smoking in live venues is a public health measure that benefits us all, but there is something about what all that smoke does to a guitar’s finish.

Just look at the headstock on this thing; it looks like Cosmo Kramer after he set up a smoking club in his apartment. The wear and tear on the maple fingerboard – mostly below the ninth fret, where all the money is – bears testimony to its importance to Williams, who was pictured with it on the cover his 1987 album Texas Troubador.

You might also recognise it from Yasuhiko Iwanade’s book, The Galaxy Of Strats, which is also a collector’s item now it is out of print. The guitar is in all-original condition except for the knobs, which have been replaced for reproductions. And Nichols, who is not averse to fixing up a vintage guitar of his own to make it playable, approves. “This thing’s f***ing sick,” he says. :This one’s good!” And for a player whose teenage years were spent trying to be Stevie Ray Vaughan, a Strat is as good as home coming

If it had only been through a tornado, he may even have taken it home. But at €79,000, it is not going cheap. You can see more of the Lester Williams 1954 Strat at GuitarPoint. And for those looking for some Jared James Nichols x vintage Gibson Les Paul content, point yourselves to the GuitarPoint YouTube channel, where Nichols has tried out a number of stunning examples – most recently a 1957 Les Paul Custom.

Both demos were recorded using a Cornell 50 Plexi tube amp head with an open-back 2x12 loaded with Celestion V30s. They stuck an Ibanez Tube Screamer in front because why the heck not. Check it out above!

The 1176 – by UREI or Universal Audio, take your pick – is one of the most revered pieces of studio gear. The peak limiter/compressor was released in 1968 by Bill Putnam who had been replacing the older tube technology in his range of compressors and preamps with the then all-new solid-state transistor technology. In fact, the name came after Putnam introduced the FET transistor technology into his 175B/176 tube compressor, the resulting ‘1176’ being a cut-down version of the original. 

The 1176 featured all-new Attack and Release controls (though these provide their fastest times with the knobs turned right – contrary to most modern compressors), with the Attack time going right down to 20 microseconds. It also famously provided four compression ratio buttons: 4;1, 8:1, 12:1 and 20:1. We say ‘famously’ because you could press them all simultaneously for the ‘All Buttons In’ effect which added an aggressive and steep compression quality, providing what became known as ‘The British Sound’. 

Compared to a tube compressor’s warmer sound, the 1176’s clear, aggressive, and fast character quickly won it fans across the production world, with its features particularly suited to vocals, drums and bass guitars. Famous users include Bruce Swedien who used it when recording Michael Jackson’s vocals, and Andy Johns who made the most of the All Buttons In feature when recording Led Zeppelin. That said, there are probably few producers and engineers who haven’t employed – or lusted after – the 1176 at some point or another, such is its legendary status in the production world.

Is it UREI or is it Universal Audio when it comes to the 1176? It’s actually both and to understand this, you need to get your head around the rather complex story of Bill Putnam’s company history. But to get that across we’d need a book as Putnam Senior has been associated with, or owned, lots of vintage companies including Universal Audio, United Recording Electronics Industries (that’s UREI), Universal Recording Corporation, Studio Electronics and Teletronix. 

Anyway, fortunately, all you need to know is that when the 1176 was released in 1968, the Universal Audio name was used, but the UREI name was dominant so also added to the branding on Revision D of the unit, although the UA name was dropped at Revision H. So already we have both names used on various revisions. 

In 1999, Putnam’s sons, Putnam Jnr and James Putnam acquired the Universal Audio brand and you know what happened next: lots of (excellent) software models of just about every piece of vintage studio gear ever made and the resumption of the 1176 (among others) in hardware, now with the UA brand name. So, as you can see – and quite confusingly – both names have been variously used many times.

Revision history – what you need to know

There have been no less than 11 versions of the 1176, the first three revisions (A, AB, and B) all called ‘Bluestripe’, with a distinctive ‘blue stripe’ on the front fascia. Revision C was the first of five versions (C, D, E, F and G) to be called ‘Blackface’. Revisions C, D and E are often cited as the best models to aim for as they featured new low noise circuitry, hence the often used ‘1176LN name’. 

The next revision (H) was called ‘Silverface’ down to the brushed aluminium front plate, and with this version, the Universal Audio name was removed leaving the UREI brand name. Revision 10 is the new Universal Audio 1176LN, so features the same low noise circuitry from Revision C, D, and E, widely regarded as the best of all versions. Finally, UA released the limited edition 1176 AE (Anniversary Edition) with the ability to switch between various revisions. Only 500 of these units were built but this v11 is the (so far) latest one you can buy (if you can track one down). 

Software models

As with any classic piece of vintage studio gear, you’re not going to want to pay big bucks for an original, nor probably the better part of three grand for a newer version. But fear not, because as with any classic piece of vintage studio gear, there are plenty of exacting emulations out there. 

So on the software side, take your pick from many. Universal Audio has its UA 1176 Classic Limiter Collection bundle (£299), which is inevitably considered the best by many producers. Almost as inevitable is a Waves version, the CLA-76 ($149). Relative newcomers Pulsar Audio has its 1178 (€149) which it says is a perfectly emulated and enhanced FET compressor. 

Purafied Audio comes in with a cheaper emulation at just £77 and ‘packs the punch of the real deal’. Purple Audio’s MC77 is one of the most highly-regarded versions (and one of the oldest and best looking). It costs a whopping $249 but as with many of our stated prices, look out for deals (whisper: it’s currently $25). 

Back to the bigger developers and we’ll finish with IK Multimedia’s Black 76 Limiting Amplifier which comes in at €99, and Arturia’s Comp FET-76 (also €99). Certainly, with the latter, we’d recommend taking a look at the company’s FX Collection 5 for a better deal where €499 buys you not only the FET-76 but 33 other plugins. We’ll close with Softube’s FET Compressor MK-2 which it calls “a ground-up remake of an eternal favourite”. We say ‘close’ but we could go on as these are just the highlights of a world of software 1176s, and, as ever, do check your DAW plugins for any suspiciously 1176-looking emulations. 

Of any freeware options out there, we’d say just go for Analogue Obsession’s FET-ish. There are almost certainly more out there but this one has a great rep and is available as a Mac plugin (unlike a lot of freeware). There is also a FET bundle of four plugins available from the same developer, although that might set you back a huge five bucks on a subscription. 

Other modern hardware 1176s

There are, incredibly, almost as many modern hardware clones of the 1176 as there are software emulations. Purple Audio has one of each so we’ll kick off with its rather fab-looking MC77 (£1,899) which is based on the Revision E 1176. 

Hairball Audio makes kits of just about every 1176 revision ever made, each one selling for around $600, and is one of the not-so-best-kept secrets of the production world, although you will need some electronic skills to put them together. Ready-made, the Black Lion Audio’s Blue Stripe is considered one of the better modern recreations and comes in at a reasonable £899. Lindell Audio also does an even better-priced hardware version with its Lin76 which comes in at an incredible £450. Finally on the hardware emulation front is Warm Audio’s WA76, which is another well-liked recreation and at just $699, a very reasonably priced one. 

These are all hardware clones though, of course – and as ever, there are more out there made by smaller boutique companies – but if you want the real deal, you can still get it. No, we’re not talking about buying an original – which will cost you from around £5,000 (which is still pretty reasonable for a piece of vintage gear) – but a new 1176 that UA continues to manufacture. The Universal Audio 1176 LN is based on the original C, D and E versions and is as close to the original as you could ask for. Mind you it’s not cheap at around £2,600 but still at least half the price of an original model. 

How to use the 1176: from some basic vocals and Dr Pepper settings to the infamous All Buttons In trick

We’ll start by using a Waves CLA76 to level vocals and it’s important to note that there won’t be any exact settings as vocals can vary so much, but a slow release and middling attack can be a good starting point with a high ratio to home in on the results but reduce this for more subtlety.

These are popular settings – Attack at around 3 and Release around 5 – to bring vocals out a little more in a mix, with the Ratio set at 4. Note we’ve switched to the Blacky on this one but the Bluey is just as good for vocals. These are known as the Dr Pepper settings as they were used on a Dr Pepper ad!

For more instant fun, try the infamous ‘All Buttons In’ mode. Here engineers went against the instructions, pushing all the Ratio buttons in simultaneously to create a more ‘British sound’. It’s particularly good on drums, adding instant aggression.

It’s also good for lead guitar and bass. Here we have the setting applied to a lovely bass sound and it brings out some of the low end, this time less aggressively.

 With bass sounds and vocals, another common All Buttons In approach to try is having your Attack and Release controls set at maximum (fastest). This adds a grittier sound to either. Here we’re showing off with our plugin collection by loading up Arturia’s Comp FET-76.

Try the previous settings on drums but be careful with your Input and Output levels. It adds proper clout and character and makes you realise how important the All Buttons In feature of the 1176 has been in its history, and why it’s such a legendary piece of studio gear.

Unveiled back in May, Logic Pro 11 brings a ton of useful new features to Apple's DAW, including stem separation and AI-powered melody and bassline generators. 

Another powerful creative tool revealed in Logic's latest update is ChromaGlow, a new stock effects plugin that emulates the warmth and character gifted to sounds by analogue audio equipment. By replicating the sonic niceties of vintage gear, this saturation tool can give your tracks texture, depth and nuance - here's how to do it.

Let’s explore some of the possibilities for the new ChromaGlow plugin. Being an included Logic plugin, it can be used at the channel level, or in our example, used to colour an entire mix. Move to an appropriate channel or master strip, and plug in ChromaGlow.

The primary element that will colour your sound relates to the selected model. There are five to choose from, ranging from vacuum tube (valve) simulations to magnetic tape and analogue pre‑amplifiers. Any of these is worthy of audition, but we’re choosing Magnetic, to simulate the sound of analogue tape.

The Style drop-down menu provides a clean or colourful setting, to accompany your chosen model. Choose clean if you want something more transparent, while colourful will be perfect for a more overdriven style of effect. As we will discover, it doesn’t take much to tip ChromaGlow into the realms of extreme distortion.

Increase the central Drive pot, which will begin to apply your selected effect preferences. In a nice touch, you will see the audio register in the form of waveforms, on either side of the pot. Experiment by taking this setting to the extreme. It can sound raucous, if required.

ChromaGlow is equipped with a number of filtering and shelving options. At the top of the window, a low bypass can be assigned at a specified frequency point. This means that lower frequencies below this point will remain unaffected. Similarly, the low and high cut allow us to specify exactly where the saturation is applied. These do not have to be used, but they can be useful in various scenarios.

Finally, adjust the mix control. If set to 100%, you will only hear the effected signal. By selecting a lower value, you can make an adjustment to the balance between the effected signal, and the original clean signal. This can be particularly useful if used in conjunction with the low and high-cut parameters.

Over the past week, we've been walking you through handy, widely applicable mixing chains suited to a variety of applications, from vocals to drums to bass. 

Today, we finish things off with a killer master bus chain that makes use of gain, compression and EQ. 

It’s pretty common to EQ and sometimes compress the master bus, but the first plugin in our master bus chain should be a gain. This isn’t to compensate for poor gain management earlier in your mix, so if you’re wanting to make major changes revisit your channel faders. However, it does help manage levels through the master bus plugins.

Next up, EQ. You can allow yourself two EQs if it suits – one for more precise changes and one for sweetening tasks. Either way, position them after your gain plugin. 

A more precise design can be handy for removing extraneous sub frequencies. For the sweetening task, a classic hardware emulation is ideal for adding air or applying global tilt. 

Mix compression can help glue the mix and is best placed after any EQs. Ideally, choose a mix-bus-style plugin (SSL bus compressor, Fairchild 670 or Neve 33609 for example). Set the ratio low (up to 4:1) with slow attack and medium or auto release. When you set the threshold, aim for a few dB of gain reduction.

Announced in May, Logic Pro 11 brought a host of exciting new features to Apple's DAW, including AI-powered melody and bassline generators and a stem separation tool, Stem Splitter.

It's the latter we're going to focus on in today's tutorial, showing you how to dissect a fully-mixed stereo recording into its constituent parts with ease. 

Create a new project, with an active audio track. Be sure that the track is in stereo, if you’re importing a stereo file. You can also create a new audio track, from within an existing project, by clicking on the plus sign at the top of the track list.

The simplest method for importing audio is to drag and drop your audio file directly onto your audio track in Logic. If Logic senses track info, such as tempo and time signature, it is often helpful to accept the incoming information. However, you may not want to do this if importing into an existing project. If unsure, try it, and you can always undo the operation immediately.

Using your computer keyboard, hold down the Control key, while clicking and holding on the audio file within Logic. A drop-down menu should be revealed and you’ll see Stem Splitter at the very top. Roll your mouse/trackpad over this wording.

The resulting dialogue box will provide options for creating the stems that you need. In our example, the music is instrumental with no vocal track. Therefore, we’ve de-selected the vocals option, in favour of the remaining three; Drums, Bass and Other. Complete the operation by clicking Split.

Our three requested stems have now been created, and assigned individual tracks in the tracklist, as part of a grouping. Notice that the original stereo master has been automatically muted. By playing back the extracted stems, you should hear a mirror image of the original, now in its stemmed form.

Now you have individual stems, you can dispose of unwanted tracks, or remix your production in a new way, complete with additional effects and processing, or even track automation. This is perfect for extracting drums from a track before adding a new set of effects or EQ, for an entirely new sound.

• Read more: We tested 5 of the best stem separation software tools (and the best one was free)

The latest version of Apple's Logic Pro DAW arrived with a host of new features, including AI-powered 'Session Players' for keyboard and bass which will automatically generate accompanying melodies and basslines that follow a given chord progression. 

You can select a Session Player from the initial Logic Pro loading page, or add a session player as part of an existing project, by clicking the plus sign above the tracklist and selecting your desired player. We’re assigning a Keyboard Player in this example, but the same rules apply for the Bass Player option.

If you’re unsure of the chords you want to use, you’ll find popular chord progressions located within the Chords menu. The Roman numerals correspond to chords within a given scale. If you select the second progression in the menu, it will sound exceptionally familiar.

If you’re adding a Session Player to an existing project, you’ll probably want to dictate your chord progression. Revisit the Chords menu, and select Follow Region Chords. This will let you input your own chords specifically for each part and region, which will create the most creative result.

Specify the chord you wish to use within each bar, by double clicking on the chord symbol located in the bar ruler, within the Session Player section. A very flexible menu will appear, allowing selection of a number of different chord types, including chord extensions and the ability to prescribe the bass note.

Once you have your chord sequence inputted, you can select the style of playing to suit your project. The Freely and Broken Chords options will sound relatively fluid, whereas the Block Chords will feel static by comparison. You can audition these at any point, and change if your production changes direction.

You can also dictate the complexity and intensity of the playing, along with various other playing facets. These are increased or decreased in order to dictate and alter the playing style. They can be changed at any stage, allowing complete flexibility throughout your production process.

Auxiliary channels and chains are an essential part of any producer's toolkit. Here's how to build them...

1. Auxiliary effect chain #1

When we set up a basic send/return auxiliary effect, the return effect is often the only plugin on the bus return. For more complex auxiliary effects we can enhance and finesse the effect with some additional plugins, and setting up preset chains for various bespoke effects is a great time-saver. Here are a couple of examples.

Although we share general auxiliary reverbs in a mix, having a specific vocal reverb is not unusual, and setting up our auxiliary accordingly is a plan. First up, add an EQ and de-esser at the top of the auxiliary. These will pre process the audio before the reverb. Next, add your reverb plugin. Finally, add a post-reverb EQ.

Sibilance can be a problem with bright reverbs, and rather than aggressively de-ess the vocal, this chain allows –us to de-ess the send into the reverb. The other two EQs are there to help tailor the input and output sound as required. Here, we’ve set up our post-reverb EQ to reduce some of the low and mid build-up in the reverb.

Next, let’s look at a special effect reverb. We normally focus on applying sidechain compression to our main sounds, but it can also work very well when applied to reverbs, creating a washy, pumping effect. Here, we are going to make things even simpler by using level modulation to create said pumping effect.

The auxiliary chain starts with our reverb; we then have a tailoring EQ, and finally, a level modulating plugin (in our case, a tremolo plugin). Here, we’ve selected a long reverb, used the EQ to focus the reverb effect on the mid-range, and then set up a quarter note tempo-synced level modulation.

For a pumping effect, set the left/right channel offset to zero, then set up a synced ¼ note modulation, adjusting the shape to taste. Set the wave offset to 180 degrees and you’ll get the classic ‘four to the floor’ kick pumping effect. We’ve saved our chain with a moderate mix/depth and we’ll adjust this each time we load the chain.   

2. A more creative Aux chain

Many of the mixing chains we’ve discussed are quite functional and are really designed to save time and replicate previously honed processing. 

However, sometimes you just want something creative and having a ready-made creative chain (or three) provides a quick springboard. Let’s have a look at a few options for transformative effects. 

Our first effect is an impulse response processor. This provides a great gateway to transformative effects as you’ll often find a selection of warped or drone impulses are included, but you can of course load up any supported audio file to create transformative (or simply strange) effects. Use the global mix to blend the effect to taste.

Trance gate, step sequencer and level modulation effects are great for adding rhythmic movement or step-based effects to sounds. There are many options, so choose one that suits you. Here, we’ve loaded up the Volume module from Cableguys’ excellent ShaperBox 3, and this allows us to add quite specific level‑based changes to the sound. 

To create more interesting sounds, we often find regular effects such as chorus or phaser are a bit tame. For something a bit more colourful, try a ring modulator or sample rate reducer. Here, we’ve loaded up a pretty basic ring modulation effect, increasing the frequency to find a ringy sweet spot, then using the mix control to blend it to taste. 

To round out and smear the sound, big reverbs can be a great choice. If you choose a decent quality algorithmic design then there’s plenty of control over the size and decay. Here, we’ve set up a long decay time (about 10 seconds) and also deactivated the early reflections section. Then it’s simply a case of adjusting the wet/dry blend.

Finally, we’ve loaded these plugins up in a particular sequential order that helps build the effect, but creative effects can be significantly changed if you re-order the plugins. For example, in our chain, if we simply move the volume modulation plugin this has a significant impact. Try swapping around the order of the effects to create new outcomes.

Black box plugins

Although it’s great to be able to use and create our own mixing chains, sometimes we just want something quick or simple. Black box plugins take one or more processors to create an easy to use, task-specific design. At the simplest level they include basic single dial plugins, where one control simultaneously sets multiple parameters. Examples include Audified’s VocalMint compressor, Softube’s Drawmer S73 intelligent mastering processor, and Waves’ One Knob series, which includes eight processors including Brighter, Pumper and Louder.

As the underlying processing chains get more complicated, the number of controls tends to increase, but you’re still left with fewer parameters to tweak than regular plugins, and all from one interface, of course. As there’s no right or wrong way to design these sorts of plugins, in practice, there’s plenty of variety. One of our faves is Mixing Night Audio’s LOLCOMP (you can download our unique version of this). Under the hood this mixing chain plugin includes five very different processing chains designed to target regularly encountered tasks such as vocal processing, low frequency processing, adding punch, sweetening and distortion.

A completely different concept is Cradle’s God Particle plugin, which provides a combination of limiting and enhancement and is a wonderful sweetener for submixes and the mix bus.

Waves have a number of artist-specific designs, including contributions from Chris Lord-Alge, Tony Maserati and Manny Marroquin. These task-specific plugins deliver complex under the hood processing via a handful of macro controls offering a quick and curated pathway to better results. 

Finally, if you fancy winding up your friends or clients, why not try JST Black Box (it’s free). It looks like a plugin, has a handful of nice one-knob effects (Stereo Spreader, Deep End, Punch It Up), but actually does absolutely nothing (or does it?). 

With piano, synth and keyboard chains, we can be a bit more ambitious with the creative effects. That said, our mixing chain still needs core EQ and compression plugins. Typically, these play a sweetening role, and to that end we’re using a hardware emulation EQ to add glossy air to the high frequencies. 

Hard compression can work well with some club piano sounds, but with piano we’re mostly after a glue effect, so a quality mix bus compressor is best. For most applications, a medium attack, automatic release and low ratio (2:1 or 4:1) does the trick, but adjust the release if the compression is too audible. 

Next in the chain is a stereo delay. This is designed to add some subtle space and movement to the sound, and to that end we’ve set tempo-synced timings of 1/4 note on the left and 1/8 note on the right, though you can choose whatever timings work for your track.

Continuing with the less is more approach on the delay, we’ve used the filters to focus the feedback on a small frequency range. Again, this is something you can tweak to taste. The wet delay blend is low, but we’ve set feedback reasonably high, so the effect adds subtle depth to the keyboard sound. 

Next, to add some richness, load up a chorus. Obviously you can set this to whichever depth suits you, but for our default the depth is quite modest (about 25%) and the speed quite slow. Again, this is a subtle effect that adds another layer of interest and the mix blend can be easily reduced or the plugin bypassed. 

Finally, to allow us to control the overall width, load up an image control plugin. This isn’t designed to artificially change the stereo image, rather it allows us to rebalance the mono and stereo components. We’re setting the default in a neutral position with a view to changing it to taste.

Raw drum hits, whether live or drum-machine-generated, can be annoyingly lacklustre, and they often benefit from some pretty aggressive shaping. Here's how to kick them into shape...

With some tweaking, this chain will work for kicks, snares and other separated individual hits such as rims, toms and so on, but feel free to create more task-specific versions.  

EQ is the first plugin in the chain. To keep things flexible, pick a fully parametric design, ideally with frequency analyser. Percussive sounds typically combine higher frequencies for attack and lower frequencies for the punch. Those frequency points vary from sound to sound but we can set up a general selection of tweakable EQ bands.

For lower frequencies, set up two peak bands with a medium Q width (we’re using 2). The lower of the two peaks is for punch (which we tend to boost) and higher of the two bands is for boxiness (which we tend to cut). Kick and snare punch frequencies vary from about 60Hz to 250Hz, while boxiness is between 250Hz and 500Hz.

For mid and upper frequencies, set up one peak with medium Q and one high shelf. The peak band here can serve various purposes, including adding poke to snares (700Hz to 1kHz), crack to snares (2kHz to 3kHz) and knock and click to kicks (700Hz to 1.5kHz). The shelf is ideal for air and presence, particularly for snares.

Next up, compression. Choose one with fast attack and release such as a FET or VCA and ideally a parallel mix blend. A medium attack setting combined with a fast release can help enhance snare tails or add harmonics to 808 kicks. That said, over-compression can kill your beats. Use the mix blend to add flavour and retain transients. 

Finally, for sounds that need a bit more help, a transient-shaping processor can be a lifesaver. Use this in conjunction with or as an alternative to compression to sharpen up your beats. We’ve set ours up, so it’s adding attack and decay, but we’ve saved the chain with the plugin bypassed, so it’s inactive when we load the mixing chain.

With bass, we’re usually trying to create a solid and more uniform outcome and a multistage approach works best. 

Achieving consistency starts with adjusting any notes or frequencies that jump out and making sure the sub-frequencies aren’t too dominant. So the first plugin in the chain needs to be a flexible parametric EQ with frequency analyser. 

Set up the EQ with a few narrow peak bands (Q=10 is a good compromise). Set the gains to 0dB and spread the frequencies towards the low end. Activate the low-cut filter, setting a medium slope (24dB/octave is a good option). This provides the basic setup ready for setting frequencies and gains as required.

With preliminary EQing sorted, we can now look at shaping the bass using compression. It can sometimes be tricky compressing bass with a single compressor, so our bass chain includes two. Importantly, you don’t have to use both if they’re not needed. The first compressor in the chain should be a fast design such as a FET.

Set the attack medium fast and the release fast with a 4:1 ratio. The purpose of this compressor is to add bite and aggression to the bass. When you load up the mixing strip, all you need to do is set the threshold to achieve the desired amount. That said, you can easily get less audible outcomes by increasing the release time.

The second compressor acts more as a level-smoothing device. A quality VCA is often the best choice for this job. Set the attack to medium slow (10ms) and the release to medium fast (0.2s) with 2:1 or 4:1 ratio. Adjust the threshold to achieve just a few dB of gain reduction.

The last plugin in the chain is a bass-end-sweetening EQ. Using a classic emulation here such as the EQP-1A achieves a desirable low-end boost or cut (60Hz and 100Hz are the best frequencies) and adds some harmonics. You can also use the well-documented EQP-1A combined boost and cut trick, which dips the low mids. 

Over the coming weeks on MusicRadar, we're going to walk you through building ready-to-go mixing chains for a variety of applications in the studio, including drums, bass and the all-important master bus. 

Today, we start off with one of the sounds instruments to mix perfectly - the human voice. Using EQ, compression and de-essing, this chain can help you take any vocal from amateur hour to radio-ready. 

1. Building your vocal chain

Our vocal chain will include an EQ, compressor and de-esser, in that order. That said, with plenty of plugin flexibility and options, we can be a bit more indulgent even in a basic chain (see step 6). Our first EQ is corrective so load up a flexible parametric design with high and low-pass filters.

Use this EQ to correct any annoyances in the vocal. This could be notching out too much edginess in the high mids (2-6kHz region) and thinning out boxiness in the mid or low mid range (500-800Hz). Finish up using the low-cut filter (24dB/octave) to remove any floor rumble or mic stand noise. 

For the main vocal compressor, you need something flexible and fast. You might get by with a decent DAW compressor, but even better would be a Distressor or Urei 1176 emulation. For the latter there are many emulations to choose from (some free). Some are more faithful than others, but even a basic FET-style plugin will give some snappiness.

This style of fast compressor can both help level out the performance and also add some bite to the vocal sound. To achieve this, set the attack at its fastest with a medium release (settings 7 and 4 respectively on an 1176) with a ratio of 4:1. Then simply adjust the threshold (input on an 1176) for the desired gain reduction.

De-essing a vocal can now be done in various ways, including manually editing the sibilance levels in the audio file. That said, using a real-time de-esser plugin is still a great way to quickly reduce most of the sibilance. Whichever plugin you use, you should make sure to use the sidechain listen option in order to find the problem frequencies.  

As mentioned, we can be a bit indulgent even in a basic chain, and the fourth plugin should be a finessing EQ. Choose a natural-sounding design such as an EQP-1A and use it to shape the overall sound. More than likely you’ll boost the high frequencies (8kHz or 10kHz) and even the lows (100Hz), but use cuts if the sound demands it.

Plugin chainers

Although saving mixing chains using your DAW features is fine, if you’re using more than one DAW, or want a bit more flexibility with routing, then a third party plugin chainer could be a better solution for creating and managing your mixing chains. 

Blue Cat Patchwork is a plugin that has grown in stature year on year, and now offers one of the best frameworks to build bespoke plugin chains. The plugin comes ready loaded with 30 of Blue Cat’s very own processors. But what makes it really special is it also supports VST, VST3 and AU, and can load up to 64 of these per instance. With flexible routing, up to eight parallel chains, external sidechain options and configurable macros, plus an extensive preset library, it’s well worth the €99 asking price. 

Waves StudioVerse is designed solely for Waves plugins, and this does limit its appeal. But if you’re already a Waves subscriber, we can’t think of a developer with a bigger or broader choice of plugins for building every conceivable mixing chain. Cool features include slots with multiband and parallel split options, eight user-definable macro controls, and a big bank of factory and producer/mixer presets. What’s more you can access Waves’ ever growing StudioVerse database of mixing chains directly from the plugin. All told it’s an excellent system.     

Excite Audio KSHMR (VST, VST3, AU, AAX) lets you create your own plugin chains, with macro controls, parallel processing, external side chaining and plugin-specific oversampling (up to x16). But it also includes a very cool leader/follower system. This clever linking system allows you to control multiple individual chains from one master (leader) chain. Excellent stuff.

2. Enhancing our vocal chain

Our basic vocal chain can be enhanced in various ways to create a more complex and capable processor. We’ve reworked our basic chain to create empty slots for the additional processing. The order is not set in stone, but this signal flow is tried and tested and will work in most cases.   

First up, we want to add some colour. We’re not really after heavy distortion but more the kind of fattening harmonics we might get by driving an analogue desk channel. Place this plugin right at the beginning of the chain, before the main corrective EQ, then adjust the drive level to taste.

Next up, and positioned after the de-esser we have two options: either a dynamic EQ or a resonance suppressor. Both allow us to remove unpleasantness in a dynamic way. Dynamic EQ is the more traditional option, but a resonance suppressor (oeksound Soothe 2 or Baby Audio Smooth Operator, for example) is really easy to use and the preferred option if you have it. 

With most problem areas resolved, we can now add a finessing compressor. Place this prior to the finessing EQ. The aim here is to round out the sound, providing gentle levelling and maybe some retro harmonics. Good options include opto-based designs (Teletronix LA2-A) or for more flavour, vari-mu valve-based designs (Fairchild 670).

An effect that is widely used to add smoothness and finesse to a vocal is a micro pitch-shift or doubler. You can add this as an auxiliary, or simply add it as an insert after the finessing compressor. You need a subtle setting, pitching of +/-10 cents left and right is often enough. Set the mix blend very low. 

Finally, we often use delay to add space to a vocal and this sort of task-specific effect can be added as an insert if you like. Place it after the finessing compressor. Choose whatever delay works with your track – 100ms slapback or tempo-synced (1/4 or 3/16ths). Set the dry to unity gain and blend in the delay effect to taste.

Panning is a key component of stereo and multichannel mixes, and allows us to control width and placement to deliver a more sonically engaging mix. In this tutorial we’ll cover some of the important principles to bear in mind.

The widespread adoption of stereo in the 1960s created both opportunity and uncertainty among music producers and engineers. Initially this resulted in some very creative stereo mixes that wouldn’t be acceptable now. 

Still, this creativity paved the way for the more established practices that we have today. 

There are now a bunch of tried and tested panning techniques that we use. What’s more, although we’re typically trying to glue together the elements of our mix, panning can be a great way to retain separation of selected sounds.  

In this tutorial, we look at how to approach panning in a mix, including panning types, panning of mono/stereo sources, how frequency content affects panning decisions and also creative uses of panning, including autopan and automated dynamic panning moves. 

Finally, although panning is a key component of multichannel mixes, we're focusing on stereo here. That said, some of the concepts will certainly transfer to multichannel mixes.

Panning techniques

First up, some basics. On a mono track, the pan controls how much goes to each side (left/right). On a stereo track your pan may be a left/right balance control and at extremes this will throughput solely the left or right of the input. Or it may offer full panning of left/right inputs to each side (stereo pan). Be aware which you are using.

There are some common conventions with panning. You don’t have to stick to them rigidly, but if you don’t, ensure you have a good reason not to. Most importantly, centre any main elements with lots of low frequencies such as kick or bass sounds. This helps establish a solid low end, and flags left/right frequency cancellations.

We also typically centre lead instruments, snares and in particular vocals. This is less to do with their low frequency content and more to do with the fact that if a dominant aspect of your mix is consistently off-centre, it draws your attention away from the centre, and the mix sounds consistently one-sided.

At the opposite end of the panning spectrum we have double tracks. These can work layered and centred, but can also create amazing width when hard-panned, with one fully left and one fully right. This works well for acoustic and electric guitars, but try it on any double tracked mono source, particularly to add width to the mix.

Panning single sources in the stereo field provides a chance to create your own bespoke stereo image. Use all degrees of panning to build your own stereo image. Part of the fun is not having to follow specific instrument positions, so experiment. What’s more, multiple pan positions can help avoid a congested or confusing mix.

Panning decisions for mono sources are often led by the type of instruments used and when they play. A good technique is to pan complementary elements to opposite sides; this also works well if the elements are staggered. For example, a shaker might come in on one side and then a tambourine eight bars later on the opposite side.

Once you start panning individual elements, you’ll also find that frequency content plays a part, and high frequencies in particular will draw your attention if they’re hard-panned to one side. Use this to your advantage to make a feature of a particular sound, or if it makes an element too obvious, pan it less or turn it down slightly.

Many elements we encounter in our mix are in stereo. Some of these such as drum kits, string sections and acoustic pianos are understandable. Others such as synth patches and in particular bass patches, are often created by onboard effects. Using these latter sounds ‘as is’ often delivers a messy and undefined stereo image.

Successful panning in a mix relies on contrast, so if you have multiple stereo sounds all competing for space, it’s often better to make some of them more mono using either a stereo pan or width plugin, and then pan them accordingly. Try this if you have multiple stereo synth layers that are creating a messy blend.

Meanwhile some genuine stereo components (drum kit overheads say) may not be evenly balanced and components such as kick and snare not centred. Here we can use panning to shift the whole image. This is true for our drum kit stereo overheads and we’ve made a small change using a stereo pan to get a more centred kick and snare.

So far we’ve talked about setting a fixed pan position. Automation lets us change this during the track and make it dynamic. Try using automation to shift the pan position of specific elements so they’re more centred during some sections and wider during others. A typical application would be verse (more centred) and chorus (panned wider).

Finally, for dynamic panning, we can use automation or an auto pan plugin. The latter is less precise but quick to set up, and can be synced to the track. Dynamic panning works really well for special effects, and is particularly good for transitions and builds. Try it on reverse pianos or cymbals to add panning interest to specific sections.

Pro tip: mono capability

Despite the widespread use of stereo, it’s still important that your mix sounds acceptable in mono. Panning won’t necessarily impact this. But if there is phase cancellation when left and right channels are summed, it can result in noticeable changes in level. Focus on any recorded stereo sources (eg drums or strings) or any sounds that use a lot of widening effects such as reverb or chorus. If necessary, don’t hard pan these sources. Instead bring the panning in slightly and rebalance the level in your stereo mix. 

Pro tip: use your ears

A pan pot gives an instant visual idea of where a sound is positioned in the stereo field. This is useful, but can be misleading, and the more you use panning in your mix, the more you’ll learn not to rely on the pan’s visual position. Much like balancing levels, the correct position is the one that sounds right. To recap, use your eyes to make sure you’re adjusting the correct pan pot, but use your ears to decide when it’s in the desired place.

Recommended listening

1. Fred again.. & Obongjayar - adore u

The intimacy of Obongjayar’s vocal on Fred Again..’s megahit adore u is strengthened by good panning choices. This is a great example of complementary panning adding feel to a contemporary track.

2. Asain Dub Foundation - Buzzin'

Dynamic panning adds plenty of interest to this classic track.

When you grab that precious bit of time to make some music at the end of the day, staring at a blank MIDI clip can be uninspiring at best and daunting at worst. Every producer experiences mental blocks, and sometimes these can even make you afraid to open the DAW in the first place.

Ableton Live 12 offers some powerful new ways to generate both rhythmic and melodic ideas, and then to transform them into something unique and creative. In the updated clip view you have a whole range of Generative Tools to quickly create new material using a range of interesting methods.

Let’s look at how to generate and manipulate rhythmic patterns to get you started. Don’t stare at a blank clip any more – create some ideas to get you moving, then shift and morph those ideas in real time until inspiration smacks you in the face.

In our tutorial we’ll start by generating a simple drum pattern. We’ll then play with the Steps value and the Pattern and Density controls to create interesting new rhythms to get our projects, and our creativity, rolling.

Load your favourite Drum Rack, create a MIDI clip and select the new Generative Tools tab. Choose ‘Rhythm’ from the top dropdown list to access tools for generating a new drum pattern. From the next dropdown, choose the drum sample you’d like to generate a pattern for.

Hit ‘Generate’ and you’ll get an initial pattern! Change ‘Step Duration’ to 1/16 and initially set Steps to 16. Playing with the Pattern and Density controls will now generate rhythmic patterns for you in real time whilst you fiddle with them. These patterns will make more sense when we add more percussion.

Click anywhere in the clip to deselect the notes you’ve just created. You can now select the next drum sound from the second dropdown list and you’ll immediately hear them playing the same pattern as the previous sound. Get over to the Generative Tools tab again and start tweaking!

Keeping the Pattern and Density values the same, but changing the Steps value can produce interesting rhythms with a polyrhythmic feel of unbelievable simplicity. Often these variations will slot together perfectly with previously-generated ideas and create cohesive, dynamic and rhythmically-pleasing drums.

• Read more: The producer's guide to Live 12: "This might be the biggest shake-up to Live in a decade"

GEAR EXPO 2024: Microphones are one of the most fundamental tools for anybody recording or performing music. From the tough dynamic mic used on a stage, through to the delicate ribbon mic used to capture the natural warmth of an acoustic guitar, the type of microphone you choose has a huge impact on the sound the listener hears. Here we will offer some guidance on the different types of microphones available, how to choose a microphone for every musical scenario and provide insight into the technology behind them.

• The best microphones for recording instruments, vocals and more
• Best cheap microphones: budget mics for the studio and stage

Fortunately, there are a relatively small number of types to go through. We’ll focus here on dynamic, condenser and ribbon microphones. Each has its own benefits and drawbacks, depending on the situation they’ re employed in, and making the right choice ensures your recordings sound as good as they possibly can be. Let’s take a look at the different types of microphones and explain a bit more about what you’d use each type for.

Microphone types: Dynamic Microphones

• Best for: live performance, guitar amplifier cabinets

Dynamic microphones are perfectly suited to live performance. This is due to their inherent sturdiness, which makes them perfectly equipped to life on the road. Functionally, dynamic microphones are so-called not because of their dynamic range, but because of the type of electromagnetism employed within. A thin sheet, called a diaphragm, transmits vibrations caused by sound waves to a coil, which in turn transfers the vibrations to an electrical wire. This creates a signal, which is then amplified to produce – or reproduce, more accurately – the sound you hear. 

Since the basic mechanical design of a dynamic microphone is so simple, they are both commonplace and extremely durable. And, unlike other mic types, dynamics do not require a power source to operate. Typically, you’ll see dynamic microphones used for live performance, where ‘audio quality’ is just one of a number of desired criteria, not the main one. That’s not to say dynamics aren’t chosen on sound quality – far from it – but they are far less delicate than other ‘better’ sounding mics and so can be relied upon to operate in more testing situations. 

They also tend to react better to higher sound pressure levels, making them ideal for recording louder signals like guitar amp. Finally, most dynamic microphones feature a cardioid pattern; this relates to the area or direction from which the microphone receives its audio. Cardioid mics pick up audio from directly in front of them, and reject any sound which is off a specific predefined axis. This again adds to their suitability to live performance, due to the mics ability to pick out a singer’s vocals but not the sound coming from elsewhere on the stage.

• Hold your microphone steadfast with the best mic stands

Recommended Dynamic Microphones

Shure SM58
This veteran of the live scene is still going strong, and is the first choice for vocals for many bands and artists.

Shure SM57
A slightly different proposition to the SM58, the Shure SM57 is ideal for miking loud guitar cabinets in studios, where it copes with high sound pressure levels like a champ.

Sennheiser E945
A superb choice for vocalists, offering protection against feedback and a great overall sound.

Beyerdynamic M88TG
Highly versatile, the Beyerdynamic M88TG works well with vocals, percussion and even kick drums in a live situation.

Microphone types: Small Diaphragm Condenser Microphones

• Best for: anywhere where accuracy is king, strings, orchestras, acoustic guitars

For many, condenser mics mean the more common ‘large diaphragm’ style of condenser. These are more common, and indeed sought after, for many applications. Yet for detail, accuracy and purity of sound, it’s the small condenser that many producers will look to. The reason is in their construction and format. Any kind of condenser mic works on the same principle; two plates – a front plate, known as a diaphragm, and a parallel back plate. When an audio wave hits the front plate, it vibrates. This alters the distance between the two plates, altering an electrical signal. 

The size of the diaphragm, however, is important for a number of reasons, the most important being the accuracy of sound reproduction. With a small diaphragm the reproduction is more consistent and accurate across the frequency spectrum, making it ideal for situations where a sound needs to be recorded as close to its natural tonality as possible. 

Small diaphragm condenser microphones are usually slim, and are often called pencil mics. They receive audio usually front the end of the mic, rather than from the side, and as such have a unidirectional pickup pattern. As with any condenser mic, they require an electrical signal which can come from an internal battery or, more often, in the form of 48 volt ‘phantom power’ from an external preamp or mixing desk. 

Recommended Small Diaphragm Condenser Microphones

Neumann KM184
These high-end small diaphragm mics work great as a matched set, and deliver incredible performance for brass and stringed instruments.

Rode NT5
Another matched stereo set, but more affordable than the Neumann set. The Rode NT5s score highly for recording grand pianos, acoustic guitars and cymbals. 

Audix ADX 51
A specialist overhead recording mic, the Audix ADX 51 works best when positioned above a drum kit for capturing room ambience.

• Best vocal mics: recommended vocal microphones for the studio and stage
• The best podcasting microphones: record your first podcast today
• Make music on your iPad and iPhone: top mics and more for iOS

Microphone types: Large Diaphragm Condenser Microphones

• Best for: speech and vocals, great for adding colour to acoustic instruments

Large diaphragm condenser mics are great all-rounders in a studio environment. Where small diaphragm mics are all about accuracy and sparkle, large diaphragms are geared towards adding colour and flavour to a recording. They operate on the same principle as small diaphragm condensers, and also require a 48v power source, but can be thought of in the same way as the difference between hi-fi speakers and studio monitors. Where small diaphragms are about reproducing a sound accurately, large diaphragms are about adding tone or flavour to a recording.

High end studios will often have a collection of large diaphragm condenser microphones, each with their own speciality voicing. Some work best as vocal mics, others for guitars. A good producer will be able to match a mic to a desired outcome based on the mic’s unique voicing. Typically, they lack the high-end sparkle of a small diaphragm mic, but this is no bad thing. Acoustic guitars, for example, when captured through a small diaphragm can easily become overpowered by minute details like fingers brushing the strings or accidental pick scratches. A large diaphragm, however, would reject these super-high frequencies and produce a far more pleasing outcome. For speech and vocals too, large diaphragm condenser mics produce a rounded, balanced sound which accentuates the source material in a desirable way.

Recommended Large Diaphragm Condenser Microphones

Shure SM7B
A real workhorse of a mic, the Shure SM7B has found real success in the speech market, and makes a superb choice for podcasting and voice-over work.

AKG C414 XLII
We loved the versatility of the AKG C414 XLII, which features nine different switchable polar patterns making it ideal for recording almost anything.

Aston Spirit
British brand Aston is building a superb reputation thanks to mics like the Spirit, which delivers incredible performance for its price.

Microphone types: Ribbon Microphones

• Best for: guitar cabinets, brass, strings

Ribbon microphones are the rare beasts of the recording world. They operate on a similar electromagnetic principle to dynamic microphones, but instead employ a strip of extremely thin foil which follows changes in sound pressure far more accurately than a moving coil capsule. This provides superb reproduction of sound, but comes with a few caveats. Due to ribbon mics featuring a single conductor, they produce a far lower output signal than regular dynamic mics, therefore requiring a high quality, low noise preamp to produce a usable signal. 

Ribbon mics are bidirectional, or ‘figure 8’, in that they receive a signal from the front and rear but not the sides. They’re often used to capture sounds from electric guitar cabinets or brass instruments, where an extended or pronounced treble response isn’t required. They are also extremely fragile and often expensive, however for capturing the tone of an amplified electric guitar they are highly sought after. Just don’t take one on tour, right?

Recommended Ribbon Microphones

Beyerdynamic M160
New ribbon mics are becoming a rarity, but the Beyerdynamic M160 proves there’s still life in there. Great for brass and stringed instruments.

Coles 4038
Coming as a pair, the Coles 4038 set work superbly as overheads for drums, producing a tremendous response from toms and kick drums in particular.

SE Electronics VR1 Voodoo
It wouldn’t be right to typecast the ribbon mic as limited in its use, as the SE Electronics VR1 proves. We had great results across a variety of situations including vocals, drums and guitars. 

Looking for more great new gear? Get all our round-up, news, features, tutorials, tips and more at our Gear Expo hub page.

RECORDING WEEK 2023: The acoustic guitar is a pure instrument. The sound it produces is self-contained, and relies on you as the player to influence it. This can be done with different string types, picks, but most of all, the room. 

There are loads of tricks for getting different acoustic guitar sounds on your recording, and in this tutorial we’ll show you just a few of them.

The good news is that you can get brilliant-sounding acoustic tracks with just one microphone, some careful room selection and mic placement. Here’s how it’s done.

1. The one mic method

Acoustic guitars are dynamic instruments, capable of outputting a range of levels and frequency responses.

For this reason, the most common way of capturing an acoustic guitar with a single mic is to use a condenser. But before you position the mic, have a listen to the guitar in the room.

Your environment can have a great effect on the sound; empty spaces with lots of hard reflective surfaces (a bathroom, for instance) will give you a bright, lively sound, whereas a room with carpet, sofas and curtains will soak up a lot of the reflections, giving you a dryer, punchier acoustic tone.


An acoustic can be played anywhere, so experiment with different rooms to see which gets you the sound you prefer.

Position the mic about 30cm in front of your acoustic, aimed at the join between the body and the neck. Positioning the mic here will keep it out of the way of your picking hand, and will avoid too much muddy low-end from the soundhole.

You will need: Condenser microphone, one microphone input, one track.

2. Stereo setup 1: X/Y configuration

Capturing your guitar in stereo can give you a huge, wide-sounding acoustic part for your tune, and it’s really quite easy to do!

When you record in stereo, it’s best if you can use a pair of identical microphones, so that the signal picked up by each will be equal. For this method, we’re going to use an X/Y placement. This is where the capsules are crossed over, so that they’re an equal distance from the source to minimise phase.

Once again, position them around the 14th fret of your acoustic. Pan them left and right, and bask in the super-wide stereo effect!

You will need: Two condenser microphones, two microphone inputs, two tracks.

3. Stereo setup 2: Spaced pair

The second way of recording in stereo is using a spaced pair.

It’s similar to the X/Y idea, except for this time we’ll physically move the microphones apart to achieve an even wider sound than before. Place one microphone between the bridge and the soundhole, and aim the other at the fretboard.

Once again, you’ll want to pan these tracks left and right respectively when mixing to achieve a spacey, stereo effect.

You will need: Two condenser microphones, two microphone inputs, two tracks.

4. Overheads

The acoustic guitar is an organic sound, and there’s an argument that it should be captured more ambiently. After all, you don’t stick your head down by the body of the guitar when listening to someone play!

A good method for achieving a very natural acoustic sound is to try positioning a pair of microphones at the player’s head height as shown. This way, you’ll be recording ‘what they hear’ rather than an artificially close sound.

You will need: Two condenser microphones, two microphone inputs, two tracks.

Pickup/mic blend

If your acoustic has a pickup on it, you can get two contrasting tones from one take by blending the sound of your pickup with the ambience of a microphone.

It’s easy to do – simply plug your guitar into your interface’s instrument input (we’d suggest keeping your preamp’s EQ ‘flat’ so you can tweak the tonality later), then record the mic signal on a separate track using the one mic method above. You might want to play with the distance of the microphone, just to get the sounds to compliment each other as well as possible.

Once you’re done, try panning the tracks, or running the pickup track through amp/speaker modelling to create some extra texture.

If your guitar doesn't have a pickup, but you're looking to fit one, take a look at our guide to the best acoustic guitar pickups on the market.

You will need: Electro-acoustic, condenser microphone, mic/instrument inputs, two tracks.

Don't Miss

How to amplify your electro-acoustic guitar for live gigs

7 of the best acoustic guitar pickups

How to record electric guitar using amp modelling plugins

RECORDING WEEK 2023: There’s a lot of mojo and myth around the dark art of recording acoustic and electric guitars. In an attempt to sort the useful from the useless, we've assembled a panel of experts and put together 20 essential pointers for the recording guitarist.

Whether you’re exploring ideas, writing songs and making recordings at home, or heading into the studio and cut some tracks, we’re sure you’ll find some pearls of wisdom here that will inspire your creative choices and help you get the best out of the music making tools at your disposal…

Meet the experts

Ethan Johns

Having been raised in the studio environment, recording guitar is second nature to multiplatinum producer, mixer and engineer Ethan, either on his own as a solo artist or on innumerable collaborations.

Roger Mayer

Scientist and inventor Roger has remained at the cutting edge of recording technology since the 60s, directly assisting in the development of some truly revolutionary guitar tones.

Stew Jackson

As much at home on the road as a guitar-toting hired gun as he is in the studio Stew has recorded with a huge range of artists including Nick Cave, Patti Smith and Blur’s Damon Albarn.

Adrian Utley

Spending most of his time in the recording suite of his Bristol abode, the Portishead man is now breaking further ground as a pioneering multi-instrumentalist, producer, mixer and engineer.

Marc MacNab-Jack

With a fondness for capturing the realism and raw essence of natural guitar tones, Marc toured with various acts before becoming an engineer, mixer and producer at Mizpah Studios in Bath.

Dominic Bailey-Clay

Producer, mixer, engineer and owner of Wiltshire’s Nine Volt Leap studios. Opting for a more organic approach to recording, Dom’s techniques allow the natural sounds of the artist to shine through.

1. There are no rules

“There are no rules,” says multi-instrumentalist and multi-platinum producer, mixer and engineer Ethan Johns. “It’s good to be open to the journey. The most important thing is the sound that’s being made. That’s the main thing. 

"I think it’s very easy to get distracted from making music thinking about gear. There’s always an excuse as to why it’ll never be good enough. Nonsense, I don’t believe in that at all. Some of my favourite records were made on incredibly limited equipment in very short periods of time.”

2. Perfection doesn’t exist

“This idea of being able to make everything perfect is really doing music a terrible disservice in the long term,” warns Ethan. “People have forgotten what they’re trying to do in the first place. 

"They get sidetracked by the technical side of things. I think there are a lot of really great musicians out there who aren’t really giving themselves the opportunity to be truly great, because they’re micromanaging the expectations of what they think a perfect record, or a perfect performance, is supposed to be.”

3. Be open-minded

“Everybody’s work method can be legit,” Ethan tells us. “It’s all about composition and then sharing that experience with other musicians and seeing what they bring to the table. I get more joy out of bringing in other musicians and letting them react to what I’m doing, so that I can then react to them. It’s just so much more exciting and it’s a lot more fun. Also, you get stuff that’s unexpected and you’re always surprised by where things could go.”

4. Start with the room

“The most important thing with recording guitar is the sound you’re making in the room,” advises Ethan. “You have to start there, and that will often come down to volume. If you’re going to a recording session, it’s good to have a few amps there of different wattage. Anything can work but if you want to make a good guitar recording you need to be aware of the acoustic environment you’re in.”

5. Experiment

“What I’ve found - and I don’t mean this offensively - is that most producers and a lot of recording engineers don’t have a scientific approach when it comes to getting their sounds,” reveals Jimi Hendrix’s right-hand man and mastermind recording engineer, Roger Mayer. “They usually stumble upon sounds by experimentation. It’s funny, because what might work for them in one room may not work in another room.”

6. Go pro

“Nowadays, studios are cheap to hire,” states Roger. “Back in the day, Olympic Studios was the equivalent of £800 per hour. These days you can expect to rent £100,000 worth of equipment in a studio and the engineer for less than the price you’d pay for an apprentice car mechanic! Get the job done professionally.”

7. Keep it real

“When it comes to recording guitars, I pretty much mic everything up,” says guitarist and producer of Massive Attack and Marc Ford, Stew Jackson. “I like to keep it in the real world with guitars. When it comes to mic distance, you tend to gain a lot more of the sound of the space you’ve got your amp in if you move it further away from the speaker. If it’s a particularly nice room that can be quite cool.”

8. Play it like you mean it

“Attack is very important and that can often be about what kind of pick is being used,” Stew informs us. “Pay attention to the way a pick hits the string, because it can be many things - aggressive, non-aggressive etc. Someone can be playing super light and ask, ‘Why doesn’t it sound aggressive enough?’ A lot of the time these things are in the playing. I mean, you could have a kid pounding out a riff on a classical guitar into a mic on the other side of the room and it’ll sound more aggressive!”

9. Be bold

“Sometimes, the artistic vision outweighs the need to make it sound pleasant,” reflects Stew. “It’s about intention at the end of the day - is it a really good song? Is it a really good idea we’re dealing with? I’m part of the way through mixing a record and some of the guitar tones we’ve opted for are vile. Disgusting! In isolation and in the mix. But it’s like broad brush strokes, or a big ol’ streak of vinegar in the gravy to cut through the cream, y’know?”

10. Learn to use reverb like a pro

“We’re always fucking with people’s sense of space when mixing and tracking,” says Stew. “Y’know - you’ve got a vocal in a cave, the drums in a giant room, and the guitars cruising over the ocean or whatever. There can be so much reverb slowly added in that you don’t notice it creeping up on you because your ears get used to it, then suddenly it’s just really confusing. I’m a massive advocate for EQ-ing the shit out of long reverbs, especially if you’ve got a lot of them in a track. I do that a lot. I band pass reverbs hard: like take all the bottom off and only let the upper mid area through. It’s great because you get the effect of a giant reverb, but it doesn’t muddy up the mix.”

11. Choose your weapon (carefully)

“Sometimes a ribbon mic can be great on a guitar cab,” recommends Portishead guitarist and producer Adrian Utley, “but you can’t have the amp absolutely bollocking if you’ve got an old ribbon mic next to it because you’ll just trash it, so maybe back off the volume a bit. They’re very fragile. You can stick a Shure SM57 straight on a Marshall that’s going full tilt and they’re OK, but with a ribbon you cannot do that - it’ll burst.”

12. Give yourself options

“Try a combination of mics, like a stereo pair of acoustic room mics near the guitar, or a microphone at the end of the guitar, or on the body of the guitar, or a close mic on the guitar and a close mic on the amp,” suggests Adrian. “Then you have things that you can play around with and balance in the mix. It gives you more options, but not a crazy amount of options. You can always just switch them off and leave the close mic and it’ll be good.”

13. Red light fever is normal

“It’s fucking horrible, but everyone gets it. I get it,” confesses Adrian. “I think this is a really important thing: if you’re going to record anyone you’ve got to get it done really quick. I really concentrate the first time I play and if you don’t capture it you might have lost some of the best ideas I might have had and there’s a chance it could be just the take you want. I’ve had that a lot. If you’re recording with a band it can be really stressful because you think ‘Everybody else might get this right and I’m going to fuck it up for everyone.’”

14. Be nice

“Musicians are delicate flowers,” muses multiinstrumentalist and owner/producer at Mizpah Studios, Marc Jones, “and we can sometimes be very insecure about our playing, so it’s really important to try and make people feel comfortable. As a producer, it’s about leaving your stuff at the door as much as the performer needs to and creating a homely environment. If you manage to create that environment, you can often avoid the unnecessary meltdowns.”

15. Go binaural (or not)

“When you go into a room where somebody’s playing, you hear it in stereo,” explains Adrian, “so it’s quite nice sometimes to reproduce that with stereo mics, or try to. Who knows, that might lead you down a path of ‘Oh well, that sounds a bit too natural - let’s do something like face the mic against the window!’”

16. Be nasty

“Sometimes it’s good to have a sense of being unsettled and insecure, but we need to make sure that people feel okay to be like that,” affirms Marc. “I’ve been in situations as a performer where people have tried to piss me off to get a better performance out of me - and it’s worked! You’ve got to understand music and have a good ear, but it’s as much about communication and being personable as anything else.”

17. Get dirty

“I love the records where you can hear the noise from amps,” enthuses Marc. “The Kinks are famous for that - those dirty kinds of sounds. I love all that character and atmosphere. Sometimes, if the amp’s too dirty - like it needs a service or something - it might compromise the tone, but if the tone is there, great! It sounds like a human being playing guitar. I love stuff that sounds like a real-life experience.”

18. Cut the crap

“Noisy power adaptors can be a problem,” says Dominic Bailey-Clay, multi-instrumentalist and owner/producer at Nine Volt Leap studios. “When you’re playing live, people don’t notice it as much, but as soon as you put a mic in front of an amp, all of that noise is immediately heightened. I tend to take everything out of the signal chain that’s not being used and only include what we’re actually going to be using. That way you’ll be working with as clean a signal as possible.”

19. Set up your guitar

“It’s a good idea to have your guitar set up properly before you record,” advises Dom. “The thing that I probably have the most issues with when recording guitars is intonation - which is just an unnecessary pain in the arse.”

20. Be natural

“You just can’t beat natural reverbs and there’s always something unique about it,” recommends Dom. “Occasionally, if I want to get a natural reverb from a real space, I’ll take a clean DI at the same time I’m recording the guitar cab and later send that back out using a re-amping box to a suitable amp in a nice acoustic space. I tend to use a matched pair of stereo mics, like the Neumann KM 184s, facing away from the speaker to record the natural reverb. The big entrance hall at the front of my studio building sounds massive. It’s close to a five or six second reverb trail.”

So, you've got the best field recorder you can lay your hands on, a pair of suitable shoes and a can-do attitude, but what steps do you need to take to ensure a successful foray into the outside world? 

1. Listening through the microphone(s) 

It’s not just a cliché that sound recordists are pictured in films and documentaries with their cans on; it’s an essential part of successfully capturing the parts of the aural environment you're targetting.

Whenever possible, record with headphones on or earbuds in so that you can hear what the recorder is capturing. This will alert you to the most troublesome of sounds: wind. 

Even light breezes can kill the low end of a recording, and though de-wind algorithms can work wonders, they can’t be relied upon.

The only time it’s best not to is if you are in a populated indoor space and don’t want to draw attention to your crowd-scene capture work, as people can, understandably, react badly to being recorded.

2. Getting the right level

The dynamic range of the world is huge, far in excess of your recorder and mic, so what level do you set?

The best piece of advice is to keep as much headroom as you can without making the noise floor of the recorder a regular component of your recordings. Think about what you want to capture and, if possible, set a level that allows for around 10dB or more of headroom.

Ambience recording is fairly simple as most of the dynamic events that may distort aren’t really what you’re after, but then again they may be golden nuggets that needed just an extra 10dB.

For dynamic material don’t be afraid to under-record and use noise reduction later, as it’s easier than removing distortion. Built-in limiters are best left off unless you’re really uncertain about your surroundings or know well how they sound/operate.

To a lesser degree, the same goes for high-pass/low-cut filters; ensure that you really don’t need the lowest octave(s) before engaging.

3. Slates and markers

Most handheld or mobile recorders have controls for dropping markers, starting new ‘takes’ or files. So do many phone/tablet-based packages. These are key for anyone serious about doing this, as it saves a lot of time in the first stage of editing and archiving.

There is also a manual approach which can be used with or instead of markers, akin to the slating in film recording. Clapping or making a loud transient, eg tapping the mic, can be useful for highlighting good takes or unwanted noise, etc.

Make verbal notes on the recording too, explaining what’s going on in the recording or some idea that comes to mind about the sound.

4. Be prepared (for sound)

Even if you just want to record some basic ambience material, keep your recorder running for as long as the batteries and data storage can manage. You can always edit out what you don’t need later, but you never know when an A-grade audio event may occur and provide something you didn’t expect, which is truly ‘found sound’. 

Cities are rich with creaks, booms, cheers and screeches that can’t be asked for a re-take. The countryside is also chock-full of bird calls, falling tree branches, rock falls and unidentified animal noises that can power any number of imaginative sound design projects.

5. Archiving is for winners 

Much like a well-sampled instrument or a bank of classic breakbeats, a library of your own field recordings and found sounds can be returned to again and again to spice up a musical project or create new sound bed layers for post production. The potential uses and combinations of the raw elements are only limited by your own creativity and imagination.

This point is moot if you don’t purposefully curate an archive, however small that may be. Best practice with regard to file and folder naming, as well as keeping raw and edited versions of your recordings, will aid efficiency and utility, as well as the all-important creative focus. 

Situating the archive is also important. Dedicate a folder, partition or drive on your main computer to your archive, or even an external drive.

No matter where it is, ensure it’s backed in one or more locations, as with all your audio data. What takes moments to archive properly can provide priceless raw materials for years.

• The best field recorders: capture sound on-the-go

So you've got a neat idea or loop going - in fact, you've been fiddling with it for a while. But how do you extend it into a full section without it getting boring? 

In dance music in particular, focussing on one solid concept can often be more effective than writing multiple contrasting sections.

Here, then, are our top tips for making your best ideas longer and stronger.

1. Development prep

It might sound obvious, but the most foolproof way to ensure you'll be able to develop and progress an arrangement is by creating your track elements with this in mind from the start. 

For example, when programming a synth or bass part at the initial loop stage, have a play with the instrument's parameters while bearing in mind how these tweaks can be incorporated into an arrangement. Perhaps dramatically opening the filter cutoff at the end of eight bars will provide a much-needed change, or reducing a bass synth's filter envelope amount will pull down the part's 'twang' and cool things down mid-track. 

If you're using a synth with macros, such as Massive or Serum, then you can go one further and prepare custom knob assignments designed to develop a part throughout the course of a track.

2. Preparing sufficient material

Another way to develop the same idea over time is to record and prepare more material than you need, with the foresight that you'll be able to return to any unused sounds or variations later and use them to develop the track further. 

This is far easier when your compositional workflow incorporates bouncing or rendering parts to audio - for example, many producers record synth parts onto an audio track in real time, continuously tweaking knobs in the search for a 'magic moment' or loop that will form the centrepiece of a track. 

Provided you've generated enough usable material, this will leave you with a bunch of variations within each audio region that you can extract and incorporate in an arrangement for extra movement and change, or the occasional fill.

3. Flip reverse

Ah, the good old reverse effect: a staple of dance music since the days of rave and jungle. It's one of the most basic effects to execute, yet it can have a monstrous impact on a dancefloor, injecting a new lease of life into a static track. Take a sound from your arrangement, bounce it to audio, then use your DAW's audio processing to play this bounced file backwards instead of the original part. 

It's a versatile trick - anything that isn't a static, sustained sound will likely sound good played backwards, from a beat to a bar or two. Your core drum groove is an obvious candidate for the reversal, but also try reversing synth stabs, basses, or even entire sections of a track to introduce some variation.

4. Rhythmic variation

An energetic way to switch up an existing section of a track is with rhythmic variation. This can take a near-infinite number of forms: examples include the introduction of a new percussion part such as a ride cymbal or bongo, or simple variations in the drum pattern itself, such as staggering the second snare of a bar back by a half-beat or so. 

If you're too lazy to head in and reprogram your parts, there are a heap of ways to step up the rhythm with a couple of mouse clicks - two of our favourite tricks are mixing in tempo-synced delay on a hi-hat sound to fill in gaps and add extra groove, and throwing a beat repeat/stutter plugin on the whole drum bus to change the entire groove.

5. Filter freak

While filtered French house isn't everyone's cup of tea, you can take a lot of inspiration from the Gallic 4/4 style when arranging a track in any genre. Simply group your core musical elements to a single bus, insert a low-pass filter plugin on this bus, then pull down the cutoff at points when you want to 'cool down' the arrangement. 

This basic technique can be used in plenty of ways: slowly open the filter to introduce your musical elements as the track develops, sweep the cutoff down later in the arrangement once your ear gets tired of the main hook, or wildly filter parts at unexpected points to keep the listener guessing.

6. Strip it down

Old funk and soul records would often strip all the vocal and melodic elements back mid-track, allowing the drummer to let loose in isolation. 

These funk-fuelled 'breaks' have long been used as sampling fodder by electronic musicians, but forget shameless sampling: instead, take inspiration from the original concept and alleviate aural boredom by giving your listener a well-needed rest mid-track, reducing the current elements down to only drums and bass for a while.

7. Duplic8

Often, you'll be happy with your current chords and/or riffs, but the actual sounds used might begin to grate on your ears. For a quick 'n' easy variation, simply duplicate a key MIDI region over to another channel and hook up a new synth or instrument. 

How you use this new element is up to you: either mute the original part and introduce this new sound as an abrupt tonal switch, or keep it subtle and blend the new layer behind the other.

8. Have a break

If a track is getting monotonous, it can be tempting to give in and switch to a more exciting, complex musical idea. Don't do it! Instead, drop out a few parts and transition into a 'mini-breakdown' designed purely to refresh the ears and break up the flow of - and ultimately enhance - the original loop when it returns. 

For maximum results on the dancefloor, keep this 'cool-down' section rolling for 4, 8 or 16 bars, then build up the tension and drop back into the original idea - perhaps with one or two new changes or sounds thrown in to surprise the listener.

9. 'Arping on

It may be a cliché heard in a thousand tracks, but give this quick and dirty method a try: once a basic chord sequence has outstayed its welcome within an arrangement, copy the MIDI to another synth instance and arpeggiate the chords to create a synth sequence that supports and rides over the original chords, lifting the interest of the track without having to write a new accompanying part from scratch. Keep these notes simple and quiet in the mix to provide subtle lift and momentum; or go all out and drop in a huge, extravagant synth arpeggio to abruptly ramp up the cheese factor.

10. The usual suspects

There are plenty of standard 'incidental markers' that can be used to keep the momentum up in a track - things like a crash cymbal marking an 8- or 16-bar section, a drum fill at the end of 16 bars and before a new section, chopping out regions to create short gaps in the arrangement, and so on. Many of these have become overused throughout pop and electronica, but their popularity continues for a simple reason: they allow a steady idea to roll along for longer, marking out time in an arrangement and adding fool-proof thrills without having to introduce brand new musical elements. Put your own stamp on clichéd techniques like these by swapping them out for atypical but functionally similar sounds, or by adding them in unexpected (but musically logical!) places, subverting the listener's expectations and helping you create a unique artistic style.

Stuck in a loop? Check out Computer Music issue 229 for ways to turn your musical ideas into amazing full songs today! Plus: FREE Transient Shaper - 59 VST/AU plugins - 900 Cinematic Drama Samples.

RECORDING WEEK 2022: While drum recording techniques are all about context and adaptation, vocal recording is almost always the opposite. 

There's a huge amount of creativity and personality brought to bear on drum takes, but the vast majority of the sonic expertise that goes into producing a great vocal track is applied after the fact (except for the performance itself, of course), and so the key, especially for the beginner, should be to get the absolutely cleanest, clearest and best vocal recordings you possibly can.

• The best microphones for recording instruments, vocals and podcasts

Environmental issues

Bright and live sounding rooms might be fabulous for evocative strings and stadium drums, but for vocals they're usually just a mix-muddying inconvenience. 

One of the first effects an engineer or producer is likely to place on a recorded vocal is a compressor, which will instantly increase the detrimental effect of any excessive room brightness. 

Next they will, most likely, apply reverb, which will further exacerbate the problem. It's hard to quantify exactly what the issue is, but it's largely to do with clarity. Because strings are quite resonant with extended envelopes anyway, natural reverberation adds to their character. 

At the opposite end of the spectrum, percussion has very fast attacks and short release times, so a little natural reverb simply smooths the transitions between transients. But with neither sharp transients nor extended release times, the human voice occupies a curious middle ground. 

It sounds unnatural and dead with no reverb, but too much and the minute sonic repetitions will blur the edges of the intricate sounds and formulations that our voices make. 

With this in mind, the wet-dry balance and the character of the reverb itself become critical with vocal recordings, so it's usually far safer to get the driest signal upfront and add effects later.

Perfect placement

In terms of microphone placement, there are a number of different techniques that can be used, but in the end you need to base it on your singer. If they play live, they'll have a tendency to creep towards the mic, even if you staple their feet to the floor - but you actually want them about 20-60cm away, as this is the ideal distance to let the sound of a voice develop. 

If you find your singer's voice too boomy, move them further from the mic to smooth things over. If their voice is thin and lacking presence, stand them closer. Ideally, if your singer is old-school, they will have learned to move in close at quiet spots and pull away for louder sections. 

If not, you can balance differences with compression later, but nothing beats the effect of a vocalist who really knows their stuff.

Spitting games

The only other real deviation is if you're having problems with plosives (the little pops of air pressure caused by saying words like 'popping'), in which case you may want to try a pop-shield (always worth it to stop singers spitting on your precious mics anyway!). 

This problem is more prevalent with condensers, owing to their greater sensitivity, but it's also largely to do with the vocalist. If you are still having problems, try placing the microphone slightly to the side of the singer.

If you do choose to move the mic to the side, it may be helpful psychologically if you give the singer something to sing at (a dummy mic, for example) to stop them automatically turning towards the real one.

Timing

The joint first most important trick for getting great vocals is pretty simple really: make sure you get a good performance. This means good people management. If your vocalist is prone to getting wasted before a session, stop them. 

They might be one of the 0.05% of singers who sound better that way, but it's unlikely. You also want to avoid tired, hungry and angry singers, as all of these things will damage a performance.

Pro Tips

Make sure your vocalist warms up. You wouldn't race a Formula One car without doing the warm-up lap, would you?

Quality is everything with vocals, so make sure you're using your absolutely best microphone - ideally a cardioid condenser on a well placed and secure stand.

RECORDING WEEK 2022: Although it’s nice to think we can capture an awesome performance in one take, recorded music is, of course, subjected to extensive repeat listening. This reveals imperfections that we’d probably ignore or simply not notice in a one-off live performance, and puts us under pressure to capture the best performance possible, without any sloppy timing or tuning.

We’ve already looked at how to deal with a handful of multitrack takes – now let’s step things up a level and look at some more intensive overdubbing and comping options.

Once again, there’s a particular universal method that will work in any DAW. Here, the key is to set up lots of identical tracks, moving from one to the next as you record successive takes. 

With this technique, there’s no attempt to punch in on existing tracks. You simply overdub a bunch of takes and then go back over them, cutting out the sections you want and compiling them on a new track.

The second, more DAW-specific method typically works by recording in cycle mode. You can either work on sections of the song or the whole thing, but either way, what you’ll end up with is your overdub takes as virtual tracks or layers on a single DAW track. These can then be viewed together with a master track at the top. By highlighting the sections you want to hear, you create the compiled take.

Every DAW has its own name for this (Swipe Comping in Logic Pro X), and it’s certainly much quicker than the universal method given above. What’s more, until you render the final edit, it’s usually possible for you to go back and make changes. With the comp sorted, you can then do any further editing, which includes timing and tuning tweaks. 

Comping: the universal method

Step 1: Start by making up a set of empty tracks, ensuring that your desired input is routed to each one. Play through the section you want to overdub and record one take. Mute the track you’ve just recorded – as you don’t want to hear it yet – and move on to the next blank track.

Step 2: Repeat this process until you have enough takes, then listen back to them one at a time. As you do so, divide each take into sections to separate the bits you think are good enough. Colour coding them can be helpful and also indicates the sections you don’t have covered yet. 

Step 3: Move sections to a new track to create your compiled master. This takes trial and error as some sections will work better together than others. If you don’t have all the sections needed, return to step 1 and record more takes. When happy, tidy up the joins and apply crossfades.

Comping: the cycle method

Step 1: Each DAW has its own approach to this, but common to most is the requirement to work on a cycled section of the track. First, set up loop points and select a track to record. Remember, with this technique you only need to set up one track, which saves time. 

Step 2: Hit record and cycle round the same section, capturing a few takes. Here we’re using Logic Pro X, with which you can watch the takes stack up one after the other with each cycle. Each take is numbered and the most recent take is at the top of the list.

Step 3: When you have enough takes, stop recording and listen back to each one. Then, in Logic Pro X, you simply select – or ‘swipe’ – the sections you want to hear. As you do this, the master track at the top reflects the contiguous sections you’ve chosen. Finally, we export to a new track.

RECORDING WEEK 2022: Preparation is the most easily overlooked but vital part of being a musician – get it right and everything is easier. And with recording studio time being a financial  investment for most of us it's vital you use your time efficiently. 

You have to remember whatever you record will potentially last a lifetime, unlike a live show which is almost always a single moment in time and very much a one off. Everything counts. So here's how you can ace your studio session time… 

1. Learn the music inside out 

Spend enough time actually listening to the music you are about to record. Try not to make the mistake of jumping straight into playing or singing too quickly. Take the time to work on your individual part and digest the style, genre, feel and overall vibe of the track you want to record. 

This will help you to create a part that is right for the song. Serve the song, not the part. It is all too easy to slip into playing or singing too soon, rushing and laying down a part that is just not right for the song. 

Make charts, map the song, know the arrangement, BUT, be flexible! It's also easy to make the mistake of being too prepared. Rehearsing parts to the point where it was ingrained and memorised. 

This would have been perfect if the producer or writer hadn’t changed the arrangement, key, structure and feel of the song on the day of the session. But that's not always the case.

It is so hard to actually change a phrase or part if you have spent hours practicing and memorising it. Try to learn the basic structure of the song, but be able to change and adapt it if necessary on the day. 

2. Bring what you will need – and what you might need

Make sure you have all of your equipment in good working order. It doesn’t matter if you’re a drummer, bass player, guitarist, singer or keyboard player, everything must be working. 

Take a selection of microphones if you’re a vocalist and you have access, make sure you have changed drum head skins on your kit, and are using the correct microphones if you’re a drummer. These should be provided by the studio, however, if you are recording at home or have specific microphones to use, make sure you use them and take them to the session. 

Guitarists and bass players; change your strings. Remember spares for everything. You don’t want to waste time having to go out and buy spare strings or batteries etc. 

It is always good to have a choice too. Different instruments, amps and effects have different sounds. Even if the gear isn't your own and is available to borrow from someone or the studio it could prove useful in the session. Don't rely on what you always use, but adapt and serve the song. 

3. Prepare to track

When you arrive at a recording studio, most things are the same. You hopefully will have a producer / sound engineer waiting for you. 

In some instances the producer is the songwriter and creator, and this could even be yourself and your own project. Either way, it's good to have an engineer to record your songs. It will give you a second opinion on how you actually sound as well as allowing you to focus on the performance.  

You could then spend a large amount of time actually creating a sound with your instrument using various outboard digital effects and processors. Microphone positioning, especially on acoustic drum kits, guitar and bass cabs as it is vital to get the correct sound. This will likely be mixed with your Direct input (DI) on amplifiers straight into the recording console. 

4. Focus on your performance 

After all of this preparation you are now ready to start recording. Try to rely on your instincts, be natural. Make the most of all of the work you have put into the project up to this point. You will also need to draw upon every ounce of experience and technique, in order to begin to deliver a solid performance as you play and sing. 

A good engineer will always keep the first recording take of the session and use at least some of it as it often has the most energy. It's vital you feel comfortable and communicate with the engineer if you need to take a break – it's your performance and you need to be able to deliver it. 

Sometimes you will have the luxury of recording with the rest of the band. This is often the best way to capture the energy of performances. The first instrument to go down is the drums, which is the foundation of the song. We then move onto the bass, guitar, vocals and keyboards. 

One of the benefits of recording multiple musicians at the same time, is that everyone can feed off everyone else’s creativity and manipulate ideas to fit the song. 

If a musician makes a mistake, it is easy to fix by editing the part or re-recording that instrument in isolation. 

5. Try to work to a guide vocal 

It helps to have a guide vocal when you are recording your part. You can then record an appropriate part to fit the song and lyrics, rather than playing or singing along to an instrumental backing track, which can sometimes turn out very clinical and cold, lacking emotion and feel.  

You would then start double tracking vocals. This provides depth and multiple harmonies to the song if needed. After this, would be doubling up tracks, adding strings, percussion and samples, basically adding the finishing touches, essentially mixing down each part and instrument for the final edit. 

6. Enjoy it!

Finally, try to enjoy the whole experience. Relax and breathe. Recording is like most things, the more you do it, the better you become at it. If you have the equipment, try to record yourself at home, begin to practice the fundamentals. 

The most important of all of these is timing.  Try practicing to a click or metronome. Your time and meter have to be spot on in order to record any song effectively and get the result you are looking for. Your preparation work really will pay off. 

RECORDING WEEK 2022: Double-tracking is most commonly used to add life to vocals, but there’s much more to the technique – indeed, you can record harmony lines on any melodic instrument.

In this lesson, we're taking a look at four easy steps for double- or triple-tracking in your recordings. 

Step 1: Get the core melody right

Although we typically associate harmonising with vocals, any melodic part is fair game, and the techniques involved are similar. Much like double tracking, the first thing to do is to make sure your core melody part is compiled and edited well, and in time and in tune.

Step 2: Pick your phrases

Decide which musical parts to add. They could be above or below the main melody and will need to follow the chord changes in the song. Also decide if you want to fully harmonise the melody – quite unusual – or add harmonies to specific phrases, which is more typical.

Step 3: Use the cue mix to hear both parts

Set up the cue mix so that you can hear both the harmony you’re adding and the core melody. This not only helps with timing, but also reveals straight away if the harmony is going to work both against the melody and in the context of the song.

Step 4: Check and compile

Finally, you’ll probably have to follow the same compiling technique you used for the core melody. Harmonies usually play a supporting role, with their levels balanced below the main melody. Checking them in context will make the editing and compiling task quicker.

RECORDING WEEK 2022: It's no secret that, as more people have started to record at home, traditional recording studios have suffered, and the situation was hardly helped by the pandemic.

However, there is still a place for the pro studio in the music industry – and there are still careers in studios to be had. Here are 11 tips for anyone who wants to find work in a professional studio environment...

1. Be realistic

Set your expectation levels to stun! If you think getting a career in a recording studio means you’ll simply be hanging around with famous pop stars, chewing the fat, then think again.

Working in a recording environment might not be as glamorous as you expect. Long hours, low pay, and watching the same process over and over again can be the norm rather than the exception. Make sure you have some realistic expectations and you won’t be disappointed. 

2. Get an education

At school, music, maths and physics are good options to excel in. Beyond school, there is the obvious route of choosing a course in recording and music technology at college - the Music and Sound Recording Tonmeister course at Surrey University is rated particularly highly, with many a recording engineer that we’ve interviewed having achieved work through its studio placement scheme. But there are other great courses from the likes of Point Blank, SAE and many more. 

3. Stand out from the crowd

Find different ways to be better than the next person. The studio career choice is a popular one and while many people opt to be good at the theory side, or using studio gear, it’s actually some of the less obvious skills, like building websites, accounting and general DIY that might well be more in demand at your local recording studio.

Have some of these extra skills up your sleeve and it could pay dividends. And being able to make great tea is not just an optional skill, it’s an essential one! 

4. Be a people person

An extension of your skillset should be an ability to simply get on with people. Being polite, courteous and friendly are traits that will set you up well for life, not just working in a studio, but in the often stressful enclosure of a recording space. Having an unflappable nature and a smile constantly etched on your face will fill those around you with confidence, and make every recording session go a lot better.

5. Attend studio events

You’d be surprised at how many studios open up their doors to the outside world so that you can come along, meet some people, learn and increase your contacts within the industry. A great career is very often just one chance meeting away...

6. Expect to work for free…

...At least at first. Internships and work experience are common practice in the recording world, as they increasingly are in many other careers.

The sad fact is that, the more exciting the career, the more this goes on. But don’t be sad about it! Treat these placements as an education where you soak up knowledge from those more experienced than you.

Getting paid in someone else’s life skills rather than hard cash might not seem like an ideal start when you’re trying to get a mortgage, but those early experiences, soaking up knowledge, will pay you back with interest down the line.

7. Listen

And talking of working with those vastly more experienced than you, one great expression to remember when working in a recording studio is to ‘listen more than you talk’. This applies not only to the music - although that is obviously a key part of the job - but also that mentor who is sharing their studio knowledge with you.

One famous producer we interviewed also noted that his underlings should never turn their backs to him while he imparts his wisdom, or risk his wrath. Might be just him, but it’s definitely something worth bearing in mind!

8. Be proactive

Work with as many artists as you can - recording, mixing, and gaining any kind of sonic experience you can get. Start with family, friends or any acquaintance you have who makes music and offer to help them make their projects sound better! Building up a fantastic recording track record, no matter where you start, could lead to a great career. 

9. Learn your process

It sounds obvious, but you should learn about the recording chain from microphone to monitor and how each and every component along it impacts on the sound. Understand the physics of recording and indeed the acoustics of the room in which the recording takes place.

10. Learn the gear

You're probably already keen on recording hardware and software but if you get to know more DAW shortcuts than the next person, that could end up making an impression down the line, so get those manuals out. 

11. Be persistent and flexible

The route to a studio career is not an easy one to map out. Expect to have periods where there may not be work so have other careers and skills to fall back on, but persistence does pay. Get out, meet people, be friendly and make great tea. You never know where it might lead. 

RECORDING WEEK 2022: Working in a commercial studio is quite different to working at home. Some of the techniques (or should we call them bad habits?) that you've picked up over the years just won't apply when you record in a place where you're paying by the day.

Effective and focused working is king in the pro recording studio - you need to make sure you're properly prepared. Here are ten things you should do before you arrive.

1. Set a goal for your session

How many tracks are you recording? What are they for? How will this session move your career forward?

2. Finish your writing before you get there

There's nothing worse than turning up for a studio session with a half-written song. Writing in the studio is an expensive way of achieving very little, so finish everything before you arrive.

3. Check your equipment works

Hiring in a replacement amp is very expensive - you could avoid the problem by having your gear serviced, or at least checked over, before you arrive.

4. Have a working backup of your files

In fact, you should have three backups of your work: one with you on DVD, should your computer fail; one at home, in case you're mugged on the way to the studio; and one stored on the internet, in case of disaster. This might seem a little paranoid, but how much longer will it take to recreate the work than it will to back-up?

5. Bounce down

Do not assume that the studio will have the plugins that you use at home. Bounce to audio all tracks that depend on software instruments or effects. This will guarantee compatibility between your working setup and the setup at your destination.

6.Get some food to take with you

You need fuel when you're working hard. Assume there'll be nowhere to eat near the studio and be pleasantly surprised when there is.

7. Rehearse

You've written your songs, but have you rehearsed them? More importantly, have you rehearsed your songs to the point where everyone is playing to the best of their abilities?

8. Research the studio

Know how to get there. Find out which DAW you'll be using and who will be engineering. Is it a highly regarded studio? How much will it cost? Will you need to hire in additional equipment?

9. Mix on another day

Don't arrange to mix on the same day as you record. Your ears will be too tired to have a clear perspective on what you've recorded. Set aside a separate day to mix if you can afford to.

10. Aim for excellence

These tracks are the ones that you want to release to the wider world, so you owe it to yourself to make them as good as they can be. The bottom line: prepare well and work hard!

RECORDING WEEK 2022: You could spend a lifetime reading about how to record audio, but most of us just want to get on and do it. 

If speed is of the essence, check out our 20 bite-size pieces of advice to get your vocal, instrument and other recordings sounding top-notch.

1. Always leave headroom

Always leave headroom on your input to allow for unexpected overshoots (extra loud snare hit, vocalist leans forward, etc.) - keep peaks below -6dBFS at least. Sacrificing a lift in the noise floor is a reasonable trade to prevent clipping that perfect vocal take.

2. Stereo or mono?

 Just because you can record something in stereo doesn't mean you should. Think about how you want it to be placed in the final mix and what the source requires. Does that acoustic guitar really need to be stereo when it's really just a rhythm part?

3. Commit if it sounds good.

Don't worry about the technical details or what those know-it-alls online might think, just record it and move on. Fresh is best, even if it's a little rough around the edges. Experience is everything, so the faster you work the more experiences you get!

4. Don't use gear just because you've got it

Don't use gear just because you've got it or want to try it out. This is particularly important with EQ and compression/limiting. If you're confident you want to commit them to tape or to disk then do so, but be sure they are providing the sound you want before you track through them, as you can't change it later.

5. Keep it short.

The shorter the analogue signal path the better the fidelity, so use the shortest and best cables you have. Remove any devices that are not being used, even if they are bypassed, as every connection and ground connection is a potential noise source.

6. Keep it simple

Only use mics you will need and sound good together, don't add things just because the drummer gets excited by attention. As we've said before, you can't fix it in the mix, so if it sounds bad now it will sound bad forever.

7. Pre-production is key

Have as clear an idea of what you want as possible, even if that's just a role or atmospheric 'place' for what is to be recorded. If you want to experiment then dedicate time to do so with the understanding that this may well produce nothing (except fun!).

8. Get the source right first

Make sure the instrument sounds its best (in tune, warmed up, or awake/sober in the case of a vocalist) and sounds good in the room before moving any mics into place. Start with a single mic and check it sounds good before adding any others.

9. Don't spend ages auditioning mics

Don't spend ages auditioning mics, unless you have time before the performer(s) arrives, as you don't want to wear them out with your technical whims. In fact, try and remove the performer from all technicalities as much as possible; they're there for art, not science.

10. Check the distance

The distance between a mic and source has a defining effect on your recording. You may be tempted to get really close to cut back on the room sound or aid separation, but be aware of the proximity effect (low frequency increase as distance is reduced) as it can quickly make for a muddy, woolly tone.

11. Try DIY

Often DIY efforts are called for to reduce echoes, resonances and increase separation. Packing blankets, duvets and carpet all make great absorbers, while dense, rigid objects (e.g. timber panels or flight cases) make great reflective separators. Listen, apply and then listen again.

12. Use the HPF or low cut

Use the HPF or low cut on mics and preamps whenever the source lackslow frequencies. Extraneous noises like foot taps, distant road rumble, and nearby bass amps (!) will eat the headroom on the preamp and add mud to your recording.

13. Explore the polar regions

Use the mic's polar patterns to your advantage, whether it's to screen out other sounds in the room or reflections off walls and windows. Look at the polar pattern data for your mic(s) to see which angles are the most/least sensitive. It's amazing how much separation you can get in a room just by changing the angle of a microphone.

14. Read your meters

Make sure you can always see the meters as you never know when something will need to be trimmed. They will also alert you to things you may have missed, such as a kick drum mic falling into the drum, a foot tapping on the mic stand or an electrical fault causing spurious noise.

15. Listen out for phase issues

Multiple microphone setups will always exhibit phase incoherencies, the challenge is to minimise them to achieve the most coherent and pleasing sound. Your ears are the best tool for identifying phase issues so use them as you add in mics. Use the phase (polarity) flip switch when auditioning mics to hear what frequencies are most affected.

16. Monitoring is key

Whether it's headphones or speakers, the performer(s) must have the best and most flexible foldback you can achieve as the better they can hear the better they will perform. Obviously you need a good monitoring environment to get the best sound setup and hear any problems.

17. Adjust your expectations

You will always set out to do more than you achieve, so be realistic and be prepared to adjust your expectations. Whether it's vocal overdubs or tracking a whole band be prepared to lose time to technical hiccups, toilet breaks, losses of confidence, etc.

18. Take it or leave it

Decide on takes there and then. Don't leave these decisions until later if you can help it.

19. Label everything

Use mic types in the track name if you want, make use of the marker tracks and track note pads in DAWs to keep notes of anything you may want to know later (alternate vocal takes, mic positions moved, etc.). Take photos of your setups too - they're often also useful for promo material.

20. Backup, backup, backup

Make sure you save your project files regularly and backup at the end of every session. When you leave the recording venue take a backup with you, or if you're taking it away make sure someone else has a copy.

RECORDING WEEK 2022: So, you're building a home studio. Once you've set up your control room, it’s time to consider the recording room. 

All the treatments discussed for the control room apply equally to the rooms we want to actually make noise in. Let’s be honest: you’re never going to achieve a large, neutral, ambient space in the average home, so unless you have a hall with a minstrel gallery, you need to aim for dry. 

The issue that usually first springs to mind when thinking about making a studio space at home is soundproofing. Unfortunately, unless you’re purpose-building a control room or live room and you want to spend a fortune and render the space pretty much unusable as a part of your house, there’s very little you can do about this. 

Double and triple glazing will do a good job of keeping out general noise, but it’s almost impossible to keep 100% of noise out (or in) unless you’re physically isolated from your surroundings. Low frequencies will arrive in your room by physical transmission from outside, and nothing you can stick on your walls is going to make any difference – you just have to work around it. 

If you live in a flat or a terraced house, you might want to think twice about attempting to set up anything more than a small control room with some high-quality headphones for your musicians. 

Sometimes even the physical sound of someone playing a keyboard can be a nuisance to neighbours living on the floor below. We know that from experience…

Windows are often cited as a weak point, and all you can really do is shut them tightly, use thicker glass, or seal them (with mastic, say) if it’s safe to do so. If the window is in a recess, you could try cutting a 100mm-thick MelaTech shape (we don’t have shares in MelaTech) to fit snugly in it, but this will only earn you 1-2dB of reduction at most. Using tightly fitting fire-doors with acoustic seals can also help a bit.

Whatever you do, avoid the following totally useless sound isolation treatments – not only because they don’t work, but also because most are fire and/or health hazards.

•   Egg boxes
•   Carpet on the walls
•   Furniture foam on the walls
•   Cavity wall insulation
•   Fibreglass insulation panels on the walls
•   Plywood or MDF on the walls
•   Rubber matting on the floor
•   Any kind of ‘soundproofing’ paint

Noise reduction hardware and software

Alongside the proliferation of computer-based home studios, we’ve thankfully also seen a vast improvement in the quality of noise reduction software. Waves X-Noise and Z-Noise are great for tackling broadband noise like computer cooling fans, while iZotope RX and Accussonus Era are very useful for dealing with everything else including planes, trains, birds, creaking chairs and kicked mic stands. Used with care, these tools really can help solve noise pollution.

If your studio is a one-room affair (that is, just a control room), you’re obviously going to find it very difficult to record soft vocals or acoustic instruments in there – especially picked acoustic guitar – without also capturing the sounds of your computer’s fans. It’s well worth, therefore, getting your computer into a different room if you possibly can, or just out into the hall. USB and other extenders are affordable, and make it easy to ferret that noisy gear away.

You can also do a fair bit to quieten your computer. Macs are pretty quiet, by and large, but if you find yours is spinning too much, it’s generally because you have too many apps running. PCs are much easier to modify, and if yours is making a racket, it might not be too difficult to replace your stock CPU cooling fans with another cooling system. 

Noise reduction tactics

There are some awesome bits of software out there that can help you sidestep many of the traditional noise and loudness problems that are intrinsic to recording live musicians, particularly in a home environment. 

Even in a well-soundproofed building, you can still hear a band playing, especially at night. A drummer hoofing a kick drum alongside a hefty bass amp powering a 15-inch cab is always going to make an undefeatable racket.

So, if you don’t have one already, make it a priority to get hold of a high-quality amp/cab simulation software suite such as Native Instruments Guitar Rig, IK Multimedia AmpliTube and the like. If you’re a Logic Pro user you’ve already got some good options in Amp Designer and Bass Amp Designer. 

These can give your bassist and guitarist a really great sound, enabling them to perform to the best of their ability while you capture their performance via DI. You could always re-amp it later if the sim doesn’t do it for you – in the daytime, maybe?

Another realistic option – particularly for rock and metal bands – is a MIDI drum kit (the Roland TD series, for example) combined with a drum ROMpler like FXpansion BFD, perhaps with some real cymbals and hi-hats thrown in for good measure.

This shouldn’t upset anyone (apart from maybe the drummer) and could actually get you a better result than recording a real drum kit – not the easiest of tasks in the average house. This won’t be so good for soft, more expressive playing, but if that’s the vibe you’re going for, then a softly played real kit may well be a viable option anyway.

Earthing

As soon as you start sending a signal from one device to another, it becomes susceptible to all kinds of interference that can show up on your track as unwanted buzz, fizz and hiss. 

The most common sort is earth hum. In a perfect setup, all your audio equipment would be grounded at a single, very effective earth. That way there would be no current flowing in conductors and cable shields, and consequently no current introduced into circuits and signals. 

Your home probably has reasonable earthing, but the actual earth points can be numerous, shared between houses and sometimes a good distance away. Installation may not be up to ‘broadcast’ standards, and the distribution of power in your house may be on ‘rings’, which can cause further problems.

The best thing you can do to keep your audio clean is to use only balanced connections wherever possible. Connecting mics to audio interfaces using XLR-to-mono-jack cables is simply not allowed, we’re afraid, and mono jack leads are for connecting guitars, pedals, amps and unbalanced instrument outputs (such as old synths) only. If you’re serious about recording, this is an unbreakable law.

For all microphones, you must use balanced XLR cables. Balanced connections use three wires: ‘hot’, ‘cold’ and ground (earth). On an XLR, these are pins 2, 3 and 1 respectively, while on a TRS jack they’re tip, ring and sleeve. The cold wire carries no signal, but will pick up the same interference as the hot wire. When one is electronically phase-reversed, the noise cancels itself out, leaving a clean signal.

Guitars, pedals and amps are more problematic to connect over distance, and prone to earth hum as they can’t take advantage of balanced connections. The walkthrough that follows shows how this can be dealt with.

Earth lifting

To solve earth hum, it’s standard practice to ‘lift’ or disconnect the earth (ground/pin 1/sleeve) at the input of an audio interface, for example. This can be done on an individual cable, on a loom or across a section of your patch bay. Be sure to label wherever you’ve lifted an earth, though, as while it may get rid of any hum, it could also allow different interference in. 

Great care should be taken with lifting earths on guitars and amplifiers; electrocution is a real possibility. Use a specialist unit for earth-lifting guitars if possible (again, see the walkthrough below). It’s not the most exciting thing to blow 200 quid on, but it’ll make your home recording experience much more pleasant – and safe.

Getting clean signals over a distance

Step 1: This is the transmit end of a buffered line driver system: a powered unit with a high-impedance instrument input. The first step is to plug the guitar into the input. If the guitarist is in the control room, a DI output can be taken direct from the transmit box to your DAW for later re-amping or processing through an amp sim plugin.

Step 2: A balanced XLR cable takes a clean, boosted and balanced instrument signal as far as you need it to go in order to reach the amplifier. You can even join XLR cables together without fear of interference creeping in. This particular system uses its own signal type; you couldn’t plug the other end of this cable into a mic input!

Step 3: This is the receive unit, and it lives at the other end of the house, next to your amp. This particular unit also lets you take two amp feeds from a single signal and drive two amps at the same time without worrying about an earth loop between the two – a feat that can be difficult to achieve at the best of times.

Step 4: The Gig Rig Humdinger is a simpler and more economic solution for signal cleansing and dual-output operation. If, for example, your guitarist wants to be with the band rather than in the control room, the Humdinger enables you to feed and record an amp, and take a second feed for a DI or amp sim at the same time. Boring, maybe, but very useful for home recording...

RECORDING WEEK 2022: It’s never been easier to whip up great-sounding tracks, particularly if you’re into electronic or heavily sample-based music. 

Every DAW on the market today ships with an extensive collection of ready-made loops, hits, pads and riffs, not to mention all those bundled synths and samplers. And then, when you’re happy with your mix, there are plenty of truly incredible plugin effects available that can give you a loud, shiny master, sometimes using just one knob.

If you’re an electric guitar or bass player looking to put tracks together in your more rockin’ genre of choice, though, you’re probably more interested in capturing the feeling you get from your treasured collection of amps and pedals being played for real. 

And things are even more complicated for drummers, acoustic instrumentalists and singers. In short, if you’re an instrumentalist and you’re looking to really capitalise on your talents and training in the production of your own tracks, there’s no avoiding the terrifying world of sound engineering. You know… with microphones.

There was a time when you had to go to a studio to record – and at great expense, too – but now we have the option of doing it all ourselves. Since you’ve bought this magazine, you’ll probably have some kind of home setup already in place, and will have picked up a few tricks for getting the best out of it. 

Today, we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to mics, audio interfaces and speakers; we have powerful computers to run the show; and we can get hold of reasonably priced software to address almost any production issues that might arise. Nonetheless, when we see our favourite recording artists at work on TV or YouTube, we can’t help but yearn to be in one of those super-posh studios.

So, what’s so great about studios anyway? It’s just a bunch of rooms with some gear in them, right? And if we have the gear, why can’t we turn our homes into studios? It’s a given that studios have good mics and preamps, and all manner of extraneous toys to play with, but it’s actually all the other stuff that makes them such wonderful places in which to record.

Our first attempts at home recording are often disappointing because the sound can be crap – it can feel like there are a never-ending stream of annoying things trying to sabotage the session.

Take noise, for example. It’s a problem – both keeping it out and keeping it in. Dirty signals can make recording electric guitars a nightmare. When you set up for a session for the first time, you inevitably end up searching for just one more female XLR-to-quarter-inch jack adapter.

And why are the guitar signals so weedy, and where did that buzz come from? Studios, of course, have cupboards full of useful stuff for solving just these problems, because they’ve been there time and time again.

1. Audio feng shui

Apart from all the peripheral requirements, the main hurdles in the home studio are the rooms themselves. Good studios are masterpieces of acoustic design, whereas our own rooms contain all kinds of acoustic gremlins that can make it difficult to get a good recording – and even more difficult to hear it properly.

In this feature we’re going to look in detail at the problems you’ll encounter recording at home, and take you through some in-depth solutions. Starting with the most important space of all – the control room – we’ll show you how to get the optimum monitoring setup and solve the most common acoustic problems. 

We’ll debunk some myths, reveal some trade secrets and show you, step by step, how to make basic acoustic treatments that don’t involve gimmicky software or useless bits of sponge. 

2. The all-important control room

It’s essential to get your control room right first, then sort out your recording rooms. If your monitoring environment is rubbish, how can you expect to make good judgements on the sounds you’re recording in other rooms, let alone try to mix and master it all when it’s recorded? 

Our quest for good monitoring and great-sounding rooms is thwarted by the unholy trinity of anti-bass, honk and reflection. Fortunately there are sonic equivalents of garlic, holy water and silver bullets to help stave off these evil forces, which we’ll show you in the following walkthroughs – and these techniques apply equally to both control rooms and recording spaces.

3. Bass nodes and modes

Rectangular rooms inevitably suffer from standing waves or ‘modes’. These are a bigger, badder version of what happens when you blow over a bottle and make it resonate, or sing in the shower and find a particularly loud note that seems to fill the space. 

A normal-sized room will have X and Y dimensions that are long enough to correspond to long-wavelength bass and sub-bass frequencies (300Hz and below), and being amongst the resonance of these low frequencies results in an inaccurate listening environment and, ultimately, a mix with a bottom end that sounds totally different when played anywhere else.

Imagine you can see two big, luminous sine waves hovering in your room when you play a low bass note on your synth; one lengthways, one widthways. If you move around the room these frequencies will appear to be louder at points where the sine waves are peaking, and quieter where they trough. 

There will also be points where the two different frequencies will meet and interfere with each other, causing exaggerated peaks and troughs, and if your listening position happens to be in one of these places, you’re going to end up with a highly compromised sound – either too much or too little of the modal frequencies. 

As well as that, loud, high-pressure anti-nodes occur near hard walls, and are often the reason why you might hear more bass on the sofa at the back of the control room than in between the speakers. This all creates a very uneven bass response that in turn causes an unbalanced listening environment.

4. The 38% rule

Most domestic rooms are rectangular and suffer from these bass issues, but on the other hand, it’s easier to target problems in a predictable room, so you’re actually probably starting from a fairly positive position. The bass response is invariably at its weakest at the halfway point of a rectangular room, so listening at the centre of a square will be disastrous.

Fortunately, we can use the ‘38% rule’ to find a position in the room where we’re least likely to encounter bass nodes or interference. This rule says that a point 38% into the length of the room is most likely to offer an interference-free listening position. 

If you measure 38% in from both ends of your room, then, you’ll get two options. Some engineers also do the 38% calculation on the width of the room, which gives four starting positions at which to place the chair.

5. Tune your room

Finding a good listening position can solve your bass problems, but it may be that the modal frequencies of your room are just too boomy. This typically happens at around 65Hz and 125Hz. 

Unfortunately, no amount of foam, egg boxes or mattresses will solve this problem – you will need bass absorbers. A perusal of the websites of manufacturers like Real Traps and RPG will reveal some great and effective products, but they can be prohibitively expensive. A single 50-500Hz low-frequency absorber can cost £300 or more – and you might need six of them to deal with your issues!

It’s not difficult to make your own versions of all this stuff, though. Low-frequency absorbers work by vibrating in sympathy with the low frequencies and are mostly constructed from metal and high-density foam or rubber. From old BBC documents to public patent information from the Fraunhofer Institute, it’s all there if you look. 

6. Find your listening position

Step 1: The first step is to use a mic and a spectrum analyser to see what an even bass response looks like. Put your best condenser mic a couple of inches away from one of your speakers and use your DAW or a synth to send a sine wave test tone at 500Hz to that speaker only. Set up an input channel for the mic in your DAW and mute it.

Step 2: Set the test tone and input level of the mic so that the level meters at around -12dB. Insert a spectrum analyser on the input channel, set it to ‘peak hold’ and slowly sweep the test tone from 500Hz all the way down. Take your time so that the analyser has time to register each frequency, and repeat the sweep two or three times.

Step 3: Freeze the spectrum analyser display. You should see that the bass response drops away evenly. Typically, you might find the slope beginning at around 100Hz and dropping off 10dB by around 60Hz, then gradually plummeting nearer 40Hz. This will vary hugely depending on your mic and speakers, but we’re looking to see an even slope for comparison purposes.

Step 4: Now move the mic to your proposed listening position, reset the tone to 500Hz and boost the mic input so that it still meters -12dB. Insert a second spectrum analyser and repeat the sweep procedure. Now freeze this second curve and you’ll probably see a few lumps and bumps in the journey from 500Hz down to 20Hz. If the trace matches Step 3, you’re sorted. If it’s lumpy, find a new position.

Step 5: Draw a plan of your room and measure out the 38% points. Measure both length and width to give four possible options for our new listening position. (Of course, some of these points won’t be practical.) Once you’ve found a likely spot, move the mic there and put a speaker where it would be if you were monitoring from that position, then repeat the sweep and measure process.

Step 6: After trying a couple of options, hopefully you’ll have found the place with the smoothest bass response curve. If there are any persistent humps you’ll need further bass/broadband absorption, but this will be the best listening position bass-wise, and you should build your control room around it. The next thing is to get your speakers correctly placed.

The recording of Ooh La La marks the point when Faces really began to fracture. Rod Stewart famously claimed to dislike the song, even refusing point-blank to record the lead vocals. Bassist Ronnie Lane would grow tired of Rod’s whining as well as his frequent absences from recording sessions, and made the decision to leave the group soon after.

Even Ronnie Wood’s guitar lost the plot. You don’t have to listen too closely to the record to hear Ron’s acoustic buzzing like crazy during the intro riff and solo. In 2011 late Faces Keyboard player, Ian McLagan, shared his fond memories of the instrument, though. “The guitar was a flattop Gibson with a faulty fret,” McLagan recounted “I remember playing it and loving the sound. I later asked him, ‘Do you still have that guitar?’ Ron said, ‘Yes, I had the frets fixed’. I said, ‘No! You’ve just ruined a fucking great guitar!’”

Despite the growing tensions within the group, caused in no small part by the distraction of Stewart’s burgeoning solo career, Ooh La La is proof that Faces could still produce magic live and in the studio. The splintering line-up included refugees from mod legends Small Faces (McLagan, Ronnie ‘Plonk’ Lane and drummer Kenney Jones), a pre-Stones Ron Wood and the vocal chords of Rod Stewart. 

Wood and Stewart had also been involved in the mod scene, Ronnie most famously having been in The Birds and done a short stint in The Creation, and both had left The Jeff Beck Group to form the Faces. Ooh La La itself was penned by the two Ronnies: Wood and Lane. 

"Ooh La La was an idea of Ron Wood’s,” Ronnie Lane, who died in 1997, told Dave McNarie in an interview on the-faces.com. “I wrote the words to that. I was just entering my ‘hating women’ stage, you know? Loving them and hating them all at the same time. I never realised when I wrote the words to Ooh La La how relevant it was. Everything that I seem to write either comes true or is what’s actually happening, and I haven’t noticed it’s what’s actually happening.”

Wood and Lane’s classic was recorded as the title track to Faces’ fourth and final studio album, released in April 1973. The sessions for the album took place between September 1972 and January 1973 at Olympic Studios in London under the direction of producer and engineer Glyn Johns. 

The studio veteran made his bones standing on the opposite side of the control room window from the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin and Eagles. He also had history with Faces, having produced their 1971 LP, A Nod Is As Good As A Wink… To A Blind Horse and a pair of Small Faces albums: Small Faces (1967) and the psychedelic masterpiece Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake (1968).

“Ooh La La was recorded in the same studio as Ogdens’ and Small Faces – the two Immediate [label] albums,” remembered Ian. “Same piano, same room, same old desk.” When Total Guitar spoke to the musician it had been almost 40 years since the recording of Ooh LaLa but he still remembered the session that produced its title track. 

“Ronnie Lane played the first acoustic and Woody played the second part,” he recalled. “The two guitars were recorded together. I don’t think Ronnie Lane would have played the bass on the live track… No, it would have been drums and the two acoustics live. I played the harmonium [air-driven reed organ] live; the piano solo was an overdub. I assume the bass was an overdub, too.”

Both Rod and Plonk declined to record lead vocals for the track, so the job fell to Ronnie Wood. It has always been assumed that Glyn Johns made the decision to give Woody his first ever lead vocal, but McLagan disputes that. He reckons Rod gave the bassist the nod.

“When we played Rod Ooh La La, he said, ‘Don’t like it!’” laughed Ian. “He continued not to like it for 25 years until he recorded a version,” he added, referring to Rod’s own take on Ooh La La, released on his 1998 covers album, When We Were The New Boys (co-writer Ronnie Lane would also cover it later). “Anyway, Rod said, ‘It’s the wrong key for me’,” continues McLagan. “He pointed to Woody and said, ‘You should sing that’. So, that’s why Ronnie Wood sang it. An odd choice perhaps, but he sang it so beautifully, I think.”

The session hit no further snags, which was, according to McLagan, typical of Faces’ recording dates. “Nothing really took us very long, because we had the great Glyn Johns moving us along,” said Ian. “It never took me long to do my thing. Often, for me, the trick was to get out the way of the guitars!”

Like all the other Faces’ records, Ooh La La sounds totally spontaneous. The band always appeared so disorganised that you imagine them staggering into the studio after the pubs shut to lay down some quick tracks and then heading off to a club. No-one imagined that Faces actually had to rehearse. That’s what Ian McLagan thought, too – until recently.

“I found the original lyrics for You’re So Rude [from A Nod Is As Good As A Wink...] on the back of a date sheet that our office would send us. Ronnie Lane wrote it at my house. Anyway, until I found that, I never thought the Faces rehearsed. I thought that was a myth! But there it is: we had two days of rehearsal and preproduction, then three days in Olympic. So it’s fact. We actually did rehearse!”

Ronnie Wood interview

Teenage Engineering TX-6 mixer: What is it?

Teenage Engineering has long been known for its bold choices. For better and worse, one of the more eyebrow-raising aspects of its output tends to be the price point of their products, ranging from the satisfyingly cheap Pocket Operators to the latest iteration of the OP-1, which has jumped from the original’s £799 to an eye-watering £2k.

The portable, rechargeable TX-6 mixer sits alongside that latest OP-1, being the first two products in TE’s new ‘Field’ range, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that it lands at an equally high-end price point of £1200. At first glance, that sort of price tag appears downright alarming for a piece of music-making hardware that is small enough to fit into the palm of your hand, especially considering that compact mixers over £200 are generally seen as top-end. There is, however, considerably more to the TX-6 than meets the eye and there is some justification for why it costs so much.

For one thing, it looks and feels great; the unit itself is sleek and incredibly rugged, with components that respond smoothly under the fingers without feeling either delicate or too stiff. From the moment of unboxing it’s obvious that the TX-6 is – in terms of its build quality – a seriously high-quality bit of kit.

The TX-6 can function in a variety of ways too, making it far more flexible than a straightforward 6-channel mixer. On the mixer front, the TX-6’s six inputs – all line level – are each stereo and can be used in mono, stereo or split modes, the latter allowing two mono inputs to be summed to each channel. There are three analogue outputs: a quarter-inch main out, plus mini-jack cue and auxiliary outputs that can be used for headphones, creating an effect loop or even hooking up a headset mic. What’s more, there’s a USB connection that allows the TX-6 to act as an audio interface with up to 12 inputs or 12 outputs (although not at the same time, and currently not for Windows). It can act as a Bluetooth MIDI interface too, both sending and receiving MIDI data, allowing it to act as an adapter or handy little controller.

Teenage Engineering TX-6 mixer: Performance and verdict

This digital mixer offers a lot under-the-hood too. There are channel effects, with a three-band EQ, a compressor, bi-directional filter and a gain control. These are joined by a pair of master effects, one set up as a send, the second as an insert that can either be placed on one mixer channel or the master output. Each offers several effect types, with slot one offering variations on chorus, reverb and delay, then slot 2 crush/distortion, virtual tape effects, filtering and tremolo. 

A simple instrument tuner is a nice addition for a portable bit of gear like this too. There’s even a basic drum machine and synth engine onboard, that can generate kick, snare, clap, hi-hat and basic sine, square, saw or triangle tones, all based around preset patterns. It’s fun, but nothing to write home about.

Sticking to the positives, it sounds fantastic – the digital effects are top class and the way each channel distorts as you push the gain and compressor is a genuine cut above. Unfortunately, there are some fairly major issues too, most of which come as a byproduct of the mixer’s size. 

The TX-6 is small. It literally fits into the palm of your hand, and it’s fairly amazing that Teenage Engineering have fit so much functionality into such a small package. However, this has the effect of making the mixer feel incredibly cramped, resulting in a confusing and rarely enjoyable user experience. While the quality components are responsive, given the lack of UI real estate, many features share buttons for navigation, meaning that numerous, poorly-labelled button combinations are required to access most features.

Most troubling of all is the placement of the inputs. The ports are placed incredibly close together, to the point that many standard mini-jack leads simply won’t fit side by side. We have a variety of leads in our studio, including stereo splitters, mini-to-full-sized jack leads, modular patch cables and basic stereo ‘aux leads’, and we struggled to use all six inputs simultaneously (for the purpose of our photoshoot we dug out patch leads previously supplied with the PO modular range). This would be more tolerable if the TX-6 shipped with custom leads or adapters, but it doesn’t; you can buy custom leads from Teenage Engineering, but a set of six will cost you upwards for £60, before you even consider multiple stereo/mono/splitter combinations. Frankly it’s just bad design, as if nobody considered how the TX-6 might actually be used.

Combined with the lack of musician-friendly features like any preamps or instrument/mic inputs – common on mixers a fraction of the price – it makes the TX-6 feel like something that has been created as a piece of sleek design rather than a practical tool for musicians. Then there’s the price. Sure, the build and sound are excellent, but does anyone need a mini mixer that costs more than an MPC Live or MacBook Air?

The TX-6 is obviously very portable, but we struggle to envision situations where it’d be worth sacrificing the saving and usability of something twice the size and a quarter of the price. You can fit it in your pocket, sure, but are there really musicians out there serious enough about their craft to spend £1200 on a mixer but not carry a backpack? 

On the upside, Teenage Engineering has already released a significant firmware update, which has addressed some of our initial concerns about the TX-6 (eagle-eyed readers may have spotted some differences between this review and the one previously published in the current print issue of Future Music). 

The most significant change is the ability to record directly from the TX-6 to a portable USB-C flash drive. Obviously, the need to use an additional peripheral is still less convenient than the on-the-go recording offered by many – cheaper – field recorders, but it's a step in the right direction that makes the TX-6 instantly more useful.

The update also rectifies the initially inconvenient way that the channel rotaries functioned – meaning it's now possible to switch between modes without altering previously set EQ or synth settings. TE has also added the ability to play the onboard synth chromatically from a Bluetooth MIDI device, which expands the flexibility there too.

Unfortunately, no firmware update can address our primary concern around the placement of the inputs – although, as mentioned, this could be counteracted by bundling a set of adapters with the mixer. It still makes it hard to really recommend the TX-6, given the price, but perhaps it's a sign that we shouldn't write it off entirely just yet.

MusicRadar verdict: While high quality in places, some poor design choices and an eye-watering price make it hard to entirely recommend the TX-6.

Teenage Engineering TX-6 mixer: Hands-on demos

teenage engineering

Jay Gilligan

loopop

Free Beat

Teenage Engineering TX-6 mixer: Specifications

• KEY FEATURES 6-channel stereo mixer with built-in equalizer, filters, compressor, aux send, cue and digital effects. Can be used as an up-to 12 input or 12 output USB-C audio interface.
• CONTACT: Teenage Engineering

Universal Audio Volt 76 series: What is it?

Until now, Universal Audio seemed happy to cater to the ‘pro' market alone. That changes with the release of the Volt audio interface range, which arrives to disrupt the more affordable end of the audio interfacing world. Here, we’re focusing on two of the more eye-catching designs, the Volt 176 and 276. 

In the box you’ll find the interface itself, a USB cable for connection and another to provide power; whilst the interfaces are bus-powered, the option to plug in may be reassuring for some. 

Installation is simple. Follow a link to the UAD website to download UA Connect, which then lets you register, install firmware updates, and then download any items of the bundled software you like. 

These include Ableton Live Lite, Melodyne Essential and assorted instruments and effects including LABS from Spitfire Audio. But let’s be immediately clear; not only are the Volt interfaces a departure from the cost of previous UA designs, they have a very different remit too. 

There’s no UAD plugin hosting, onboard software processing nor Console software to configure recording setups. Instead, the Volts are plug-and-play USB-C interfaces that offer UA’s excellent preamps and, in the case of the two units on review, the added benefit of some onboard analogue processing to bring the flavour of two legendary Universal Audio designs to the tracking stage. 

Universal Audio Volt 76 series: Performance and verdict

To focus on the 276, the interface is a desktop module, with combo XLR/TRS inputs on the front panel, with phantom power (one button for both inputs), Instrument switches and a headphone port (with generous gain), alongside a headphone volume dial. 

The upper panel is where the main action is, with Gain dials per channel, plus the option to switch in 76 Compressor and Vintage options. The first speaks for itself, with an analogue circuit enabling you to choose 1176-style Vocal, Guitar, Fast or Off one-button compression at the recording stage. 

Whilst the Vintage option is less explicitly named, it provides the tube emulation, gentle saturation, top-end lift of UA’s classic 610 channel. No additional controls are available for either option; you won’t find Ratio switch options for the 76 Compressor, for instance. But all three compression settings give a characteristic flavour without going overboard. 

Otherwise, the dominant Monitor dial controls output volume to speakers, and a blue-lit Direct button enables direct monitoring by routing the inputs to the outputs. Round the back, you’ll find stereo outputs, the USB connector and MIDI In/Out ports. 

The 176 offers all of the above but limits itself to one input channel. 

The Volts are a radical departure for UA, offering an affordable taste of the brand’s key ingredients. They’re incompatible with plugins from the UAD store and don’t even work with UA’s LUNA software. But they absolutely deserve to shake up the budget interface market with a great design, a plug-and-play workflow and hard-to-beat audio conversion.

MusicRadar verdict: Bad news for other affordable interface makers: these are great, with a spritz of hard-to-resist recording history magic on top.

Universal Audio Volt 76 series: The web says

"Universal Audio’s first serious foray into the budget interface world is definitely a success. "
Engadget

"The Volt 276 Studio Pack is a great place to start for a budding podcaster or YouTuber. The interface is excellent for the price range, and the effects, while subtle, will give your recordings a very nice polish. For advanced users and musicians, the Volt is all about the top-notch input effects."
Macworld

"These capable and great-sounding audio interfaces are ideal for a first studio build, and a worthwhile upgrade for existing small setups."
MusicTech

Universal Audio Volt 76 series: Hands-on demos

Universal Audio

Ed Thorne Music Production

Universal Audio Volt 76 series: Specifications

• 1-in/2-out [176]
• 2-in/2-out [276]
• 4-in/4-out [476, not reviewed here]
• 24-bit/192 kHz audio conversion for Mac, PC, iPad, and iPhone
• Vintage Mic Preamp mode for recording voice or guitar with the rich, full sound of a classic UA tube preamp
• Built-in 76 Compressor adds instant clarity and punch to voice, instruments, and other sources with all-new analog circuit based on UA's iconic 1176
• Essential suite of audio and music software from Ableton, Melodyne, UJAM's Virtual Drummer, Marshall, Ampeg, and more
• Studio-quality headphone amplifier for loud, clear monitoring
• USB bus powered to reduce cable clutter
• 48V phantom power for condenser microphones
• Direct Monitoring for latency-free recording
• Stylish, rugged construction built to withstand years of use
• 1-in/1-out MIDI connections
• USB-C to USB-A cable included

James Hurr has a CV most producers would give up a limb for, including collaborations with the likes of Todd Terry, Mark Knight and Basement Jaxx, and remixes for Beyoncé, Nile Rogers and Kylie amongst others. We caught up with James to find out more about his love of dance music and how he creates his tracks.

What’s your approach to production?

“I was never really taught too much about production and mixing and all that, I’ve learnt in the practical world. One of my first jobs was working in a recording studio as a tea boy and I started making tons and tons of records for them. Learning for me has just been through trial and error. 

"I’d say that’s probably my biggest asset, having had the luxury to make tons and tons of music. You eventually work out, after getting feedback from DJs, hearing tracks played out and on the radio, what works and doesn’t.

“Over years and years of being an engineer and ghost producer, I’ve learnt a lot from other producers. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some incredibly talented people who really know their stuff. So, I’ve learned a lot from doing, talking to people, and of course by watching things like Future Music tutorials!”

As a dance music guy, do you always start with beats?

“Yes, absolutely. I started DJing in a bar at quite a young age, and did that for quite a long time. So for me the groove section is first, it’s fundamental. I just wanted to make music that people could dance to. So unless that groove section was right, it wasn’t right as a song for me. I couldn’t listen to it, and didn’t want to put it out.”

Was house music your first love?

“Not really. I used to be an angry teenager, I was into a lot of heavy metal! I think it was when I found myself dancing in a field at like 3am one summer that I realised that actually I was really into hard house, trance and drum & bass. Harder dance music, as opposed to house.

"That sort of music was being played at the raves I was going to, warehouse parties. I used to go to Trade at Turnmills at the turn of the century, but it wasn’t until I went to Ibiza a few years later that I suddenly went house crazy. 

"I went there thinking all I wanted to hear was hard house and hard dance music, but it completely blew my mind seeing a club of 10,000 people all going off to house music.

"It was a bit slower. It was a bit funkier. It was a bit groovier. It had vocals and funky bass lines, this was the era of funky house. It blew my mind and I came back a convert. So it was one week in Ibiza and I never looked back!”

The interplay between kick and bass is one of the most important aspects of dance music. How do you get them right?

“I sample a lot of kicks. Years ago, I used to take the kick straight out of a 12” inch mix, and just use that as a straight lift! Now I tend to use Metrum and I will mix maybe two or three kicks together to create something a bit more original. The kick is fundamental to this style of music. 

"I learned very early on that if you get the kick right in the first place that will help your mix enormously. Having the kick at 0dB, or minus one or two, but extremely loud, that would be your benchmark for mixing and you could fit everything else around that.

“That was a great starting point, because the kick takes up most of the mix. It’s just huge sonically, it’s enormous for just a single part. In terms of balancing it with the bass, you know what, I sometimes still get it wrong! It’s one of the hardest things to do. 

"I’ve got fantastic monitors, I’ve got really expensive equipment and I still find that sometimes you play stuff in the club and go, “oh, the bass is a bit too loud” or “oh God, OK, I need to cut more low end off that”. 

"Sidechaining the bass always is an absolute standard, but I find there’s just so many variables with bass... the key of the track can make a huge impact on how the bass sounds.

"I’m getting better, but I’ve been mixing kick drums and bass for 20 years and still it throws me some surprises!

“I still work with a lot of DJs and the absolute best test is always to get a rough mix, as good as we can get it in a day or two, then play it on different club sound systems in a set. You hear it in context with the other tracks, and you’re super tuned into the acoustics. Having that is a massive advantage.”

Creating a half-decent beat in your DAW has never been easier. Chuck a few choice samples into the timeline and drag them into position; or fill up a drum sampler with one-shots and lay down MIDI notes. 

With the quality of software and sounds that available to us today, even an absolute beginner can manage to piece together a generic drum groove with relative ease.

But the key word in that sentence is, of course, generic. A producer must cultivate a unique signature style in order to rise above the masses, and seeing as electronic music is predominantly driven by rhythm, drums are one of the best places for you to start.

Here are a dozen drum-processing tips that will help you go beyond the functional and unleash your creativity. 

1. Memory lane

Give particular sections of your drum track a unique sound by processing them using mixing techniques from different decades. Dialling in a 50s-flavoured mono sound in the verse followed by a cutting edge, super shiny 2010s tone in the chorus will bring an original twist to your drum track.

2. In effect

Want to make your drum track sound radically different for a breakdown? Try bouncing it to audio, uploading it to Dropbox or similar, then recording it played back through your phone, speakers or car stereo. Simple yet effective!

3. Parallel weirdness

Ever used a plugin and just thought it was plain weird? Next time you’re mixing beats, slap that maverick gadget on an FX return before using it for some parallel processing. We found that Sly-Fi’s Kaya (modelled on a one-off reel-to-reel tape machine with the preamp wired directly to the tape head) can do wonders for boring stock percussion, for example.

4. Super shiny

Looking to add brightness without shredding your ears with excessive high frequencies? Dynamic EQ is your friend. By using dynamic EQ rather than regular ‘static’ EQ, you can add high frequency sparkle that then reins itself in when treble-heavy hi-hats, cymbals and rides are in the mix.

5. ’Verb variety

Anyone who’s heard any music at all from the 80s will be familiar with the massive sound of gated reverb on the snare and toms. Twist this technique round by sidechain compressing the drum reverb bus using the dry hits from your kit as a trigger. This’ll give your drums a dry yet spacious sound that can be embellished with saturation placed before the compression.

6. Bold EQ moves

Making one drum part sound different to the others using EQ is a great trick for giving your beats a unique identity. You could make the snare really bright to bring out its attack; roll the tops off the kick drum to give it a muddy, sampled flavour; or even add a dash of low-mids to hi-hats for a chunky feel.

7. Break the rules

Next time you reach for the Amen, Think or Apache break, try picking one part of it and placing it on another channel, then applying the most wacky processing to it that you can think of. Crazy stereo width on an Amen crash or 8-bit crunch applied to a snare from an otherwise crystal-clear break, for example.

8. EQ your sends

Sometimes, a less invasive way of getting the tone you’re after from a drum mix is to add some EQ to your parallel processing returns. A high-frequency shelving boost on a New York compression bus can add density to the highs without making the overall sound too fizzy, for example.

9. Pan’s people

Add a unique twist to a mono snare by sending it to a mono reverb bus, then panning the wet and dry signals apart by opposing amounts. Keep the panning subtle for a cohesive sound, or go crazy to really put your stamp on it.

10. On the attack

Using transient shaping on a drum reverb is great for shaping beats in a non-invasive way. Adding attack will give your drum sound extra snap without majorly increasing the peak volume. Taking attack away can give the reverb a smoothed-out, syrupy sound that perfectly compliments an attack-heavy drum kit.

11. Reverse sidechaining

Instead of using your drum hits as sidechain compression triggers for bass, synths and such, try using a musical element as the trigger for compressing your percussion tracks. Deploying your bass as the sidechain trigger for a ride cymbal, for example, can give the whole mix an overloaded, ‘surpressed’ sound for perceived weight.

12. Reverb roulette

It’s common knowledge that sending all of your drum parts to a reverb bus helps with gluing them together, but have you ever tried using a different reverb for each individual drum part - kick, snare and hats? This can give a unique sound when done with care.

BACK TO LIVE: Kilohearts is enabling new generations of successful music producers and sound designers by developing industry-leading, modular audio software with a focus on workflow and creativity.

The Kilohearts Ecosystem

The Kilohearts Ecosystem is made up of modular hosts (Phase Plant, Multipass and Snap Heap) and individual effects units.  Effects can be used by themselves or combined within the hosts as Snapins to build your own unique, custom built synths and effects. Create anything from simple, functional processors to complex, unpredictable beasts, and everything in between. 

The possibilities are literally endless.

Kilohearts Snapins are lightweight but powerful plugins that present you with the important settings in a no-nonsense way. Every setting and component is clearly documented so you know exactly what goes on when you turn that dial. Kilohearts hosts are the factories where you combine Snapins and modulation to create your unique sounds and effects. 

Kilohearts Phase Plant

Phase Plant is an award-winning, semi-modular softsynth and Snapin Host developed for music producers and sound designers that offers a unique combination of quality, functionality, and workflow.

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Kilohearts Multipass

Multipass is a multiband modular Snapin host which splits the incoming signal into up to five frequency ranges which can then have effects chains added to them separately. 

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Kilohearts Snap Heap

Snap Heap is a FREE host for Kilohearts Snapin effects.

Quickly and easily combine your Snapins to create your own serial and parallel modular effects units.

Snap Heap currently comes loaded with over 100 ready-to-use presets, and you can find plenty more out in the wild. 

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All Kilohearts Host plugin presets are fully functional regardless of which Snapins you own.

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The Kilohearts Subscription

The Kilohearts Subscription gives you instant access to every single Kilohearts plugin, and all official Content Banks, for just € 9.99 a month. This includes our groundbreaking modular synthesizer Phase Plant, as well as our other highly customizable modular effects hosts, all of our effects plugins, and several exclusive Content Banks by professional artists and sound designers!

There is no annual commitment so you can take a break any time and re-subscribe when you can’t bear to be without our software any longer... and to make the deal even sweeter we came up with Subscriber Rewards which you can use to buy perpetual licenses.

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A free ten day trial is available of all Kilohearts plugins so that you can get familiar with the Kilohearts Ecosystem before you decide to buy. 

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Exclusive “Back to Live” Discount

Get 10% off any purchase until July 31st 2021 with coupon code B2L10 (cannot be combined with other discounts or coupons). 

We've teamed up with electronic music mentors One For The Nerds for a new series of monthly live Q&A sessions. 

In this latest edition, OFTN founder Shadow Child chats to fellow mentor Nu:Tone, Reset Robot and Josh Butler to talk about the way they work in the studio, how they're coping through the pandemic and more.

Ever found yourself losing focus and direction during a sound design session? We've all been there. 

Musical sound design is an amorphous, open-ended art, and it can be all too easy to lose sight of what it is you're actually trying to create. But fret not - we have the remedy in the shape of 18 tried and tested techniques guaranteed to keep you on track.

Whether you work through them methodically or dip in at random when the need for external input arises, there's plenty of inspiration to be had here. So fire up your DAW and let's get started.

1. Sidechaining

Obvious pumping compression isn't just for French house-lovers - it can also be a powerful sound design weapon. Create movement in your ambient drones by setting up a 'ghost' sidechain trigger hit (ie, one that's routed to a compressor's sidechain input, but not your project's audible output), then use this to get a pad moving in intricate ways. Dedicated plugins such as Cableguys' VolumeShaper 4 take this concept to another level, allowing you to set up rhythmic movement that can be taken up to speeds in the audible frequency range, for FM-like buzzing and grunge.

2. Record everything

It's a good idea to set up a recording when you're messing around with a new synth or experimenting with sounds. Use an external wave editor such as Sony Sound Forge to record the output of your computer and all those happy accidents and freak sounds will be saved as an audio file, so you can go back and pick out the best bits later.

3. EQ as a creative filter

Record yourself automating boosts, cuts and notches with your favourite EQ plugin for some dramatic and controlled filtering FX. Be sure to get really animated with your EQ, rather than just sticking a load of static instances of it on every channel. Move those EQ nodes around and create some life!

4. Plugin orders

The order in which your plugins are placed will greatly impact the final sound of the channel, as the output of each one has a bearing on the effect of the next. A saturation effect preceded by a filter will sound completely different to the same two plugins the other way round, for example, while adding heavy compression to the chain will have a different effect depending on whether it comes first or last. You can either plan your effect orders, or drag-and-drop them around to see what works best. Both are valid approaches.

5. Distortion

Saturation, overdrive and distortion can be magnified or tamed though pre- or post-filtering, and run in parallel for a more controlled effect. Each processor type and algorithm will have its own sound, so try out different types and amounts of distortion for each task.

6. Save your FX Chains

Make use of your DAW's ability to save effects chains, so that you can instantly call up your favourite settings without having to load each plugin individually. When you're in the zone and looking to get sounds fleshed out quickly, this can be a game-changer.

7. Use the wrong plugins

Just because an effect is designed for vocals, guitars or whatever, that doesn't mean it has to be used solely for that purpose. Try using a vocal enhancer on a synth lead, or a vocoder on a drum kit or a bassline, for example.

8. Patch cloning

Here's a good way to learn what each knob and button on your new synth plugin does: open up two instances of it, initialise one and load a preset you like in the other. Now gradually match all the parameters on your 'blank' synth to the patched one. As you're doing this, you'll hear how each change you make affects the sound, and discover how the sounds you like are made.

9. Bitcrush excitement

Bitcrushing is great for creating harsh, deranged, trashy sounds, but used subtly over a lead, chime or bass, it can be a great way to introduce some missing high-frequency harmonic excitement to a sound in a way that EQ can't.

10. Mash up your existing parts

If you're looking for new sounds to fit into your latest track, bounce out some of the existing parts and melodies, and import them into a sampler or a granular synth. Twist them up in new ways, recording what you're doing, then bring them back into the song and reverse them or layer them up with the existing parts. Chances are this process will trigger a fresh idea to make the whole track more interesting.

11. Add a transient from another sound

If your sound needs more attack or punch, trying layering the transient of a kick, snare or percussion sample into a sampler, and playing it over the sound you're working on. This works especially well for adding sharp, clicky transients to emphasise arpeggiator patterns.

12. Noise is your friend

White, pink and other colours of noise are extremely powerful sound design tools, especially when combined with filters. They're great for creating extreme whistling/screeching effects - try using a low-pass filter with the cutoff turned down and high resonance to create an airy, windstorm-type effect.

13. Auxome

Auxiliary return tracks can be very useful for adding a '3D' feel to atmosphere and drone sounds. Try loading widening effects like a short delay, reverb, chorus or phaser onto one and sending your main signal to it. Blend the spatial effect in parallel with the solid dry signal. Aux returns can also be EQed and processed separately, giving you even more control over the effect while leaving the dry signal intact.

14. Record the world!

Grab your smartphone or a portable recorder and go nuts recording yourself hitting objects, rustling paper, driving your car… anything! When you're back in the studio, layer your captured sounds into pads, use them as percussion or twist them up into something entirely new. You might be surprised at how far you can stretch and mangle your Foley and found sounds.

15. Layering textures

Your tonal range expands greatly when you start stacking up contrasting textures and layers. A grainy field recording will dirty up a clean synth pad, gritty noise artefacts will blend dirt into a simple bassline, and generic white noise can add top-end scrape to a synth lead. If you need more low-end power, stick a simple sine or triangle wave under more complex mid-range parts. Think of an individual sound as a colour on your palette - start mixing them together for a huge selection of sonic combinations.

16. Reverse it

Try everything in reverse! Pads, basses, vocals, effects, drums, leads… sounds can take on a whole new character when played the wrong way round. Sampler reversing is good for cycling drones and pads, but audio manipulation directly on your DAW's timeline can be a more visual, immediate route to backwards FX and reversing edits.

17. Extreme timestretching

When you're after new atmospheric pad sounds or intriguing, dissonant tones in a hurry, use Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch to take existing vocals or track parts and stretch them out to extreme lengths. Your source material can have a great effect on the type of result you get.

18. Separate sessions

Sound design can be a complex, intricate and time-consuming process. If you stop mid-way through a composition session to create a rise or drone, you'll likely cut off your creative flow and lose the vibe of the track. Get around this by allocating time to your sound design sessions, and set yourself goals. Create five pad samples in an hour, synthesise ten basslines from scratch, or another similar challenge. Render each sound to your samples folder, save the synth patches/FX chains, then draw on them when you're next composing.

Krust (aka Kirk Thompson) first tasted success in 1989 as part of Fresh 4 (along with Paul ‘Suv’ Southey, Krust’s brother Flynn and Judge), with the top 10 track Wishing On A Star. 

After immersing himself in his local Bristolian music scene - growing up with the likes of The Wild Bunch before they became Massive Attack - he became one of the city’s jungle pioneers, producing break-led, furious tempo tracks like Warhead, Music Box and Soul In Motion on labels including Moving Shadow, Talkin Loud, V Recordings and Full Cycle, which he set up with Roni Size in 1994.

Krust was also in Size’s Reprazent, along with fellow Bristolians Die, Suv and MC Dynamite, who won the 1997 Mercury Music Prize for the album New Forms. 

Krust’s solo albums include his critically-acclaimed debut Coded Language and 1999’s Hidden Knowledge and he has remixed everyone from Alex Reece to Moloko. In 2008 he took an extended sabbatical away from music production, setting up a successful life-coaching business, but in 2016 he returned to resurrect Full Cycle with Roni Size and embark on an album project, The Edge Of Everything, which he released late in 2020.

As he reveals here, the new album reflects his extraordinary journey, a cinematic project that has arguably been three decades in the making, updating the original jungle sound for the 21st century but throwing in three decades of huge experiences into the mix. For its recording, he spent a year collecting the sounds, the gear and the plugins, and utilised a unique DAW-production process to put it all together. 

Before we discuss his latest opus, though, we should really go back to the start of his musical journey…

Can you cast your mind back to Fresh 4 and how you got into music in the first place?

“We started that when I was 14 years old. A friend of ours knew The Wild Bunch who are now Massive Attack, and we started going to all the house parties in Bristol; if they were playing we would go.

“There were lots of these and warehouse parties in the city in lots of empty buildings. You could put a sound system in and have a party and we’d go to them as these kids watching Miles [Milo Johnson, aka. DJ Milo] or Nellee [Hooper] cut up these two pieces of vinyl. We’d see Mushroom [Andrew Vowels] getting on it, Grant [Daddy G] was on the mic, and Tricky joined them.

“We eventually thought ‘we want to do that’ so we saved and got a turntable. We slowly got good at DJing and scratching and then found a squat in Bristol and had a 24-hour party hangout where we could play music any time. That’s how we got going and how we built up our name.”

How did you then make the transition to music production?

“When we got signed to the majors as the whole Fresh 4 thing, I walked into a recording studio - a proper, huge one with a big SSL desk, Tannoy speakers in the wall, everything - and I saw the light! I saw the speakers, the desk and it was just like ‘I’ve got to learn this’.”

So how did you learn it from there?

“My brother had a sampler - a Casio FZ-1 - and I bugged him until he taught me how to use it. He kept showing me and after about a year I got it and that was it.

“After we got signed to Virgin Records, my brother spent a year in the studio with [producers] Smith & Mighty making the tune Wishing On A Star and I was fascinated by the process. I knew it was something I could get into. We started off being B-Boys and scratch DJs and in order to progress in that world you had to have the edge, so learning to make your own records just seemed like the obvious thing to do.”

How did that then lead to those early jungle records?

“After we got dropped by the record company, me and Suv were sharing a flat together. Smith & Mighty were living around the corner and they would go to these raves in the country every weekend with these massive sound systems in the middle of a field.

“Every so often we’d hear these tunes with a breakbeat that we knew - we were scratch DJs so we knew the breaks. So among the house and techno ‘boom-boom’ you’d get these breaks and we’d run to the decks to try and find out what this tune was and asking the DJ, ‘what’s going on, what do you call this?’. No-one had a name for it then, but eventually it had this name ‘jungle techno’ - a combination of techno but with breakbeats in it.

“We started experimenting with breakbeats - just messing around trying to figure something out. We knew we loved hip-hop but didn’t want to make it as it was sounding American. We weren’t going to make techno or house as that wasn’t really who I was, so we were just experimenting with the breaks, but we were finding that we were speeding them up.

“Gradually it was like 130bpm, then 140, then 150. Then I remember we came back to the studio one afternoon and somehow one of the channels had been muted where the kick drum was, and when we played the track it played the beats and what we’d programmed but without the 4/4 and all of a sudden we were like ‘what the fuck is this?’ We all looked at each other, like ‘wow, that’s it’. And from then on we started to make tunes without that 4/4 beat in and that’s how jungle started for us.

“When we got into music, we came from a jazz/DIY/punk attitude where anything goes. It wasn’t like ‘this is how you make this music’. It was more like ‘we’re just going to listen to all our favourite things from where we come from and we’re going to put it into this music’. Somebody else called it jungle, we didn’t call it jungle. We were just making this music; kids who didn’t have many options and we felt we weren’t being supported by society and found this thing we were really good at and we claimed it as ours.”

Then you all started Full Cycle Records. What do you recall about those days?

“The first tour we went on it was me, Roni [Size] and Dynamite [MC] and that was driving around France and Italy in a Mini. It was nuts: all of us in a Mini with records and bags. We’d started off in a squat, then we were making music, then we got a bit on the radio, then we were the first jungle DJs to get signed to this agency, then we started going to Germany every two weeks, then France then Amsterdam. It felt like we were at the beginning of something new and exciting; an adventure and I was with my mates - Roni was with me.”

And then jungle became massive, and very quickly…

“It was a movement happening on a global scale and revolutionary in a sense, like punk or jazz, like music that your parents didn’t get with a type of aggression and raw energy to it. People loved it. Everywhere we went there would be 2-300 people at the beginning but the next time we went there would be 1000 and then the next there would be 3000, all in a short space of time.

“Europe got it straight away. Germany was a stronghold for jungle for years; it was huge in Italy and then Japan embraced it; Australia and New Zealand; Hong Kong and then the whole American thing. And that’s when it changed a lot. America was big and vast and where the movies and hip-hop came from and all of a sudden it was like ‘and they want us to play our music to them!’”

How did you start getting early studio gear together and where did you get some of those early breaks from?

“In the very early 90s we were using the Casio FZ-1, an Atari computer and Cubase. Then I got to travel the world through Full Cycle and wherever we would go we would ask the promoter to take us to secondhand music shops or record shops and we’d buy old keyboards, synthesizers or drum machines and go to record shops and buy loads of vinyl. 

“We used to have these portable turntables and we’d sit in the hotel rooms, smoke loads of weed and listen to loads of records. That’s where I got my music education. I would sit in the studio before I made a record and play all kinds of records: jazz, hip-hop, soul, blues, rock… it didn’t matter. I knew there would be a break in there and I’d sit there for hours just listening and sampling loads of little things but also listening to all this music, all these arrangements and I was often like ‘wow, you can actually do that in a record!’. And all of those ideas just seeped into my music and our processes; we were fascinated by it.”

You won the Mercury Music Prize in 1997 as part of Roni Size & Reprazent - how did that change things?

“It definitely took it in a different direction and that was inevitable. It’s just like grime now with Stormzy - the music can’t stay underground forever because you have got to go somewhere else with it. You can’t just carry on making the same kind of drum & bass that you were making and be happy; it’s like staying in a relationship that isn’t working.

“We had created a new sound, we progressed it, we reinvented it and then when someone says ‘we want to sign you and take your sound to a whole new level’ you think ‘well, why not, we’ve done all these other things so let’s see where this goes?’ It’s still in the spirit of being an adventurer; in fact it’s the same adventure.

“So we made a couple of albums; Roni made his and I made Coded Language and it took us out to a whole new audience. That was the spirit of jungle… it’s not the music that you make, it’s about the attitude.”

You took a lot of time out of music. Why was that?

“My feet hadn’t touched the ground for years. I’d been doing it since I was 14 and I got to about 35 and thought ‘enough’s enough’. I had all the trappings and the toys of success but it wasn’t making me happy. The experience was starting to wear thin and relationships were getting strained as we’d toured so long with Reprazent.

“Some bands are touring bands but we are essentially studio musicians, engineers and producers who had to promote the music. But we ended up so long on the road, we didn’t get into the studio and that took a toll on our relationship and making music. It was very exhausting and for me it was time to move on and figure out what I wanted to do.”

But after taking a long break while you mentored people, you re-emerged in 2016…

“I definitely go through my cycles and my seven years was up in mentoring and I needed to move on. I’d achieved what I wanted to do helping people. I was in a good place and felt like music could come out of me again so I started messing about and tinkering, pushing buttons to see what would happen.

“I had a conversation with Roni and he said he wanted to do Full Cycle again and for want of a better expression I wanted to relive the glory days again. So we did that again but I quickly realised that it wasn’t really what I wanted to do. It was almost like revisiting an old relationship so that’s when I started writing the new album. I was going to do an EP. but it dawned on me that I hadn’t made an album in ten years.

“At that time Doc Scott had heard one of my tunes, Portal, and said he wanted to put it out [on 31 Records] so that was a nice boost. Then it just kind of grew. I was happy with the music I was making and knew I wanted to make a record about the times we are in and for it to reflect the experiences I have had. I also knew I also wanted to make a movie so I approached the whole process like I was writing a film. Every track was a scene so how you watch a movie was how I made the album.”

Did you have an idea of the sound for the album before you started it?

“I knew that I wanted it to be the evolution of [late ‘90s releases] Soul In Motion, True Stories and Future Unknown, tracks that I felt were epic. I was asking myself ‘what would it sound like if I were to make Soul In Motion or True Stories today?’

“I also looked at all the 70s music that I really liked and played loads of records - prog rock, blues, funk, rock music - and listened to the production, the vocals, drums and bass and asked myself what equipment they were using, what desks, synths and so on.

“I reverse-engineered the sound and went out and bought a couple of synthesizers and some pedals. I couldn’t afford the SSL desk so looked at the Waves stuff and really good emulations of EQs, compressors - the best of what there was that I could afford.

“I already had some SSL outboard, an 1176 and a Neve mic pre which I used to put a lot of the synths into Pro Tools. I was really just trying to create an authentic musical sound. It was like I was using 35mm film to make a movie today so it would look and sound and feel different.

“As it is a ‘70s sound, I wanted to leave it loose, unedited and a little bit out of key. I didn’t want to get too caught up in the technology, to anally correct everything. I wanted it to sound organic and to do something to you, the antithesis of what everything else is doing. Everything else is perfect and digital and immaculate. I want mine to sound the opposite so, when you hear it, it stands out.”

Which plugins did you try to get the authentic vibe?

“I did try the obvious plugins that everyone else was using but to me they didn’t give me what I wanted. I tried to make sure everything that went into the computer went through a pedal and through a compressor to soften the edges, so when it got to the computer it had this almost downgraded, rustic sound, like it was made in a ‘70s studio.

“I used a lot of the Waves NLS plugins and also NI’s Reaktor to make a lot of synths up myself. I used a lot of Waves emulations too. Their SSL stuff is alright but I ended up using SSL’s own emulation plugins which sounded a lot better.”

It sounds like you spent a long time preparing ‘the sound’ of the album before you actually started making music?

“I spent a year getting the sound right with loads of plugins and synths and my old equipment like an ARP Odyssey, Solina, MPC and Moog Model D. I bought a Novation BassStation and Arturia Minibrute, loads of pedals and just set the room up and set about running things through different things making sounds, loops and patches and just getting a sound palette together to start making music.

“I was just making all these synths behave like me. So it was like ‘how do I make this preset sound like me?’. I’d detune it, put an effect on it, put a pedal on it, take it down an octave. I’d go through all my synths and do that. Then I’d go through my pedals and sample loads of bass sounds with like a Moog pedal on it or a fuzz box. So I’d have a sample library of basses and so on - drums, noises and effects. All of that was then ready to go so I started to write the music.”

You mentioned earlier that you treated the process a bit like creating a film. Can you expand on that?

“I was watching films trying to understand how the dialogue, lighting and scenes worked, really trying to understand why directors did what they did. I always said ‘I’m not going to be obvious, not just make a song that starts here and does that’. That era for me is done. I want to make music that is challenging and can just evolve as a piece of art or an experience that you are having. I want you to be in the music as you would be a film.

“It’s not ‘Friday night’ music that you play in a club where everyone is having a jolly time. You’re going to be soaked into this experience and, when it’s finished you’ll be staring into space for a couple of hours pondering your own existence. That’s what you get from watching a great movie.”

So how did you bring the sounds and the concept together?

“When I started a session I’d get one instance of Pro Tools up, write loads and loads of loops, spending a day just writing drum loops; maybe 100 drum loops all in 16-bar loops. Then I would go over them with basses, then strings, then effects. The whole page is set up from track 1 to 25 - the drums, the basses and synths are all the same tracks so there are 40 or 50 tunes on one page in 16-bar loops and from that I’d start putting them together in any order to create something.

“I hear the colour of the sound and feel it as well. So I’m going through everything trying to feel emotionally what goes together and it might go ‘click’ and it’s right in the pocket, and that’s how I built the whole thing, the emotional landscape. Once I have a minute of a track, I’ll then export it out to its own song and work on it from there.”

The album is extraordinary and really does evoke the older jungle vibe while doing something totally new. Was that the real point of it?

“You have to really know who you are and what story you are going to tell. Are you going to regurgitate a story that is already out there, maybe making it sound louder or more shiny? Most people just want it ‘cheaper, louder, faster or stronger’; they don’t want innovation, just micro adjustments. But I think the responsibility of a creator is to bring people into fascinating new worlds, so the advice I would give anyone who is a creator is to try and take someone somewhere new because ultimately we all like something new… eventually.” 

From jungle to drum & bass

What is your view on how D&B has evolved? 

“It’s evolved and it’s done its thing. The spirit of what it is has changed a lot. What it is now hasn’t got the same ethos as it did when it started and I think that has got lost in translation. I get kids coming up to me and saying ‘you’re old school’ but to me ‘old school’ is James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder. When people listen to the source of the sound, they only go back 20 years. But jungle and the attitude of jungle is coming back.

“It’s evolved through what drum & bass has become which I think was an offshoot of jungle; we’ve now come full cycle… without making a pun! There’s more to it than what we’ve explored.

“The commercialisation of music and the monetisation of music always drives it to a certain place that isn’t the best for the music. Commercialisation of art has ravaged the creativity of it and that needs to be readdressed in whatever way.

“People are seduced by the opportunity to be famous for the weekend. It’s got its appeal and I understand that. Lots of young people who are looking to make their mark and looking for some self respect can get it in this music. It’s not as difficult as it used to be. It was very hard back in the day to be accepted by someone who had a recording studio and they let you in. You had to really know your shit, know someone who had a studio, you had to prove your chops and have a lot of respect. You couldn’t just call yourself a DJ back then, you had to earn the title. Can you hold a set down at peak time at these raves? It was the same in production - you earned your chops.”

On life coaching and mentoring

In 2008 Krust took a long break from music to study life coaching. Here he explains what happened over the following seven years…

“I left Full Cycle and tried to discover myself again. I’d been Krust for so long that I’d forgotten who Kirk Thompson was. I had what most people would say was a breakdown but in retrospect it was actually a ‘breakthrough’.

“I got to the end of a cycle and just didn’t know how to go to the next level. Coming to the end of one experience I learned to recognise there was another one and it wasn’t the end. Most people call it a ‘breakdown’ because they think it’s the end and they hold on to what they became without understanding that once you let go there is actually more. I took some time, started to read books, started to meditate, changed my diet, stopped partying and eventually Kirk Thompson started to come back. And he wasn’t that bad!

“I went on courses, started studying and really developed myself. I started looking back on why I had become a DJ and started all these labels and started to understand the psychology of why I  believed I could do it - why one person believes that it’s going to work for them with no evidence whereas another person is in the same position won’t go into the unknown. I started to explain this to people and saw a change in them and could see the seeds of something happening.

“It was the same kind of excitement and energy that was creeping in as when I helped start Full Cycle and Fresh 4. So I formed Disruptive Patterns and created a workshop and a friend of mine Lady MC invited me to come and talk to some of her students and I really enjoyed it and it was having some benefit so I did that for six or seven years, coaching and mentoring. And it showed me that if I can learn something else like this, I can learn anything.

“One of the most powerful lessons that I teach people is: ‘listen, if you can DJ in front of a crowd of people, or sit in a studio and transfer your ideas into audio that other people can listen to, dance to or buy, then you are in the one percent’. Most people who do this don’t get that. It is a high IQ skill which not many people can do. Once people understand that, it changes their psychology. Until then they say ‘well I’m just a DJ or I’m just a producer’. But no, you are so much more than that. You are somebody who is able to learn how to DJ or become a producer and if you have those skills you can learn anything, so just turn your mind to the next thing you want to do and start learning that.”

Yelle’s music seems to belong in the city. The dirty synth basslines and clattering electronic rhythms of songs like Karaté or Ba$$in are tailor-made for the neon-soaked streets of LA or Tokyo.

And then there are Julie Budet’s vocals: Madonna meets Francois Hardy in some sleazy, backstreet Parisian bar. Even their videos seem to exude a disturbing, futuristic glamour. Dystopian vignettes with an impish sense of humour and style.

It’s surprising, then, to find the Yelle studio perched atop a lonely clifftop on the Brittany coast. The views are breathtaking, with the vast sea and sky visible from every window.

“This place is very peaceful,” admits Jean-Francois Perrier, the technical half of Yelle. “Earlier this morning, I was walking with my friend and we could hear nothing. Some people need the noise of the city to help them create music, but we prefer silence. I don’t really listen to much music at all, not even when I’m driving. It’s better that I have some space in my head… space for the ideas to happen.”

There’s a common misconception that France’s relationship with dance music begins in 1995 with the release of the Daft Punk single Da Funk. Then, along came Air, St Germain et al, and suddenly everyone was talking about the ‘French touch’.

In truth, the story starts way before Bangalter and de Homem-Christo. As well as the twisted funk-pop of Les Rita Mitsouko and René Roussel in the 80s, French acts had a huge impact on 70s disco. Cerrone, Gibson Brothers, Sheila and B. Devotion, Ottawan, plus synth-heavy grooves from the likes of Space, Droids and (of course!) Jean-Michel Jarre.

Perrier’s own introduction to dance music came via the Beastie Boys. “I was aware of French dance music, but I thought it was boring,” he laughs. “I didn’t get it. I played drums in a rock band and all I cared about was Rage Against the Machine. After I heard the Beastie Boys’ Hello Nasty album [1998], I started make the connection between Rage Against the Machine and dance music.”

For singer Budet, music runs in the family. Her father had a minor French hit in the '60s and her earliest memories are of going to see him play live. “I was surrounded by music. There were lots of instruments in the house and different singers staying with my father. There was always music on the radio or someone playing records. The house had a lot of soul.”

Budet and Perrier have been a couple for almost 20 years, but only started making music around 2005. An early demo found its way to EMI and, much to their surprise, they were offered a deal. “We didn’t tell them that we only had three songs,” admits Perrier.

Despite singing exclusively in French, Yelle’s music quickly found its way over to America and to the rest of Europe - notably, all three of their previous albums have made the Top Ten in the US Dance charts. 

The latest album, L’Ère du Verseau was released in 2020, and includes the singles Karaté and - arguably one of the most beautiful songs of the year - Je T’aime Encore. 

The couple live together, but Perrier - over Skype - handles most questions, occasionally checking a name or detail with Budet. 

“There are times in the studio where I spend two days moving hi-hats and snares to get a beat to sound human and I think Julie doesn’t enjoy it too much. Like most normal people, she would rather be downstairs sleeping!”

You live together, you’re a couple and you spend most of your time making music together… has that ever come to cause you any problems?

Jean-Francois Perrier: “Not too much. The only time there is tension is when we are recording vocals. I have a strong idea of how I want the words to sound, but Julie is the singer and she also knows how she wants to create the vocal. In the past, it was a battle, but we found a solution. When it’s time for the vocals, I leave the studio and we have a friend who looks after the production. It’s much better for everyone!”

Rhythm is a key component of most Yelle songs. Presumably, that comes from your days as a drummer?

J-FP: “Drums was the first instrument I fell in love with as a kid. Even if I saw a band on a TV show, I was fascinated by the power they gave to a song… the big cymbals. Eventually, I managed to find a pair of sticks and started playing on some containers and pillows in my bedroom.

"My parents realised this was something I cared about and arranged for some lessons with this old guy, a blind drummer. All he had was a kick and snare, but that’s where I really learned to engage my ears. To work out how the drums can assist a piece of music.

“I joined my first rock band when I was 11, but for the next six or seven years, I really concentrated on my technique. I wanted to understand how rhythm worked. I studied Latin and bossa nova, African rhythms. I would dance around the room, playing a rhythm with my arms and legs. What does this beat need? Where are the ghost snares? I would build the rhythm in my head, then play it.

“Around the time I was listening to the Beastie Boys, I also got my first electronic kit, a Yamaha DTX. Again, this was pushing me a bit closer to dance music because of the different sound of the drums.

"The big change was when I got a cheap PC and a copy of Acid. I was like, ‘Oh, my God!’ Chopping up samples and building rhythms on the screen. I don’t know if I was any good, but it felt so easy for me.

“For many years, I didn’t care about chords or melodies. I just wanted to build a beat that would make people dance.”

When you first started working with Julie, did you have an idea of what kind of music you were going to make?

J-FP: “It would be electronic dance music, for sure. And I knew that Julie’s vocals would give the music a lot of character. We were together for maybe two or three years before we started Yelle, and I was always fascinated by the way Julie used to sing around the house. It was as if she was standing on a theatrical stage. She would act out the words… it was very dramatic. I started to imagine music that I could put with her vocals. If she sang, ‘Bah-da-pap-pap’, I would blend an imaginary rhythm and bassline.

“We put together our first demo, Je Veux Te Voir ,and placed it on Myspace. We were encouraged because we had some people listening to us and that’s when we met the guy from EMI. It was like a fairy tale.”

What was the setup for those early songs?

J-FP: “My cheap PC, Acid, WaveLab for handling the samples, some cheap guitars and the blue Korg Electribe groovebox and synth. I also had an Akai MPC2000, which I was told had a fantastic sound, but I much preferred working in the computer. It was cheaper, too. I couldn’t afford lots of synthesisers, but with Acid and WaveLab, I could build up lots of synth samples from the Electribe.

“I have never been a geek when it comes to studio gear. I don’t know all the latest software and I hate spending lots of time messing around with a new piece of equipment. I prefer a setup that allows me to write songs very quickly. Once we have a good song, then I can start worrying about the details - layering the kick drum and bassline, changing the sound of a synth, adding a little swing to the rhythm.”

You never allow the computer to swing the beat?

J-FP: “No, never! I started doing it by hand in the early days and it is now part of who I am. I go through every beat of the rhythm and adjust where it is and how loud it is. People used to tell me that I should use a compressor to control the dynamics, but I didn’t know how to. That’s where my history with the drum kit is useful. I would make little changes until it sounded like I was playing it myself. And it’s worked much better for us because it also means you keep a human dynamic.”

Are you still with Acid? It seems to be one of those DAWs that has a loyal following.

J-FP: “The MIDI side of things was always a bit of a nightmare with Acid. I did look at Ableton in the early days, but it was just a bit too similar to Acid. A friend of mine was working on Logic and it offered everything I needed. It had a nice look, too… very professional.

“For plugins, I use a lot of Waves and a lot of Soundtoys. Valhalla for reverbs. Serum and some of the Arturia models for synths. I like the Logic plugins, too. 

“I use Sculpture for bass and the flanger on my snares, just to add a little bit of movement. Today’s plugins sound so good! When I listen to the EchoBoy, I am amazed at how warm it sounds. How do they do it? Even the basic presets sound incredible.

“At the beginning, I wasn’t so confident about using delay and reverbs. But, in 2010, when we were working on the Safari Disco Club album, I was fortunate to have some advice from Phillipe Zdar [the former member of Cassius who sadly died last year]. 

“At the time, my mixing technique was all about left and right. I was only thinking in stereo. Philippe said, ‘Why not introduce a third dimension into the music?’ He explained his theory of using three levels of delay and reverb to help you place elements in the room. Let’s say that you have lots of different tracks and the mix is not sounding so clean. Normally, if there are instruments that interfere with each other, you use the stereo field and frequency to give them some space.

“But why not use distance to move them away from each other? The snare and the vocal both use the same frequency, so, keep the snare very dry and add a longer reverb/delay to the voice. You have left and right, but you also have some distance.”

Does that mean that you spend a lot of time mixing on headphones? Gauging your three dimensions?

J-FP: “For the voice, yes. But that is more for comp-ing the vocals… making sure everything is clean and tidy. For the rest, I trust my speakers, Focal CMS65s. I recently bought a pair of Barefoot Footprint 01s and I decided to send them back because I was so used to my Focals. They sound more coherent.

“Actually, I do have one concern with the Focals and that is with the sub frequencies. The middle and the top is OK, but I sometimes get confused with the subs. That’s why we still send the tracks out to be mastered. I prefer to let Mike Marsh at the Exchange work on them. He’s a genius!”

Is the final mix a long process?

J-FP: “No. I’m not one of those producers who will change everything at the last moment. By the time I get to the final mix, everything is kind of in the right place. The only advice I could offer when it comes to mixing is make sure you have a nap. 

“There have been times when something is not quite right, but I can’t work out what it is. If you’ve been mixing for several hours, you might not be in a good place, so, take a break. Go downstairs, have a cup of tea. Have a sleep for 20 minutes. As soon as you go back to the studio, the answer will become clear.”

When it comes to songwriting, is it a collaborative process? Julie works on lyrics; you work on the music?

J-FP: “Not always. In fact, there is no single blueprint for a song. It happens in many different ways. Sometimes, I am in my car and one sentence comes into my head. Just a sentence… but I like the feel of the words. Julie sometimes starts with a single word, just because she likes how it sounds. Then with the recent single, Je t’aime Encore, we had some music and Julie wrote the lyrics in 10 minutes. So fast! As if she was writing a letter.

“I do like to work with beats, as well. If I’m not in the studio, I sing the beat into my phone, but if I’m at the studio, I play it on the drum kit, again, recorded with my phone. I like the sound of the compression you get. It’s very dirty and powerful. 

"I have tried recording my drum kit properly. You know… with all the mic placement and everything. But it always sounded shit! I put it next to a sampled kick and the choice was easy. The phone loops become extra bits of percussion… maybe a hat pattern to add some life. You can hear that on the track, Noir, from the new album.”

Despite only having two or three band members on stage [in recent years, they’ve been joined by Franck Richard] your live shows are full of movement and musical twists. What gear have you actually got up there with you?

J-FP: “For a long time, we toured as the Yelle Club Party, which was Franck on drums and percussion, me on computer and CDJs, with Julie singing. Then, we moved to me and Franck both playing drum kits, which was much more exciting… very visual.

“And the visuals have really become just as important to the live shows as the music is to them. The computer is now linked up to the light show, and then Julie will have all of her costume changes. 

“There is an idea for the future where we have Franck playing just a kick and snare with drumsticks, and the keyboards fixed to a wall at the back. That way, people can really start to see what’s happening. 

“As well as hearing the songs, I want the audience to see them. OK, we are not a full live band with 10 people on stage, but we still want to entertain the audience.”

The latest Yelle album, L’Ère du Verseau, is out now on the Recreation Center label.

Vocalist Julie Budet on the importance of singing in French

“In France, we do have a strong singing tradition, with people like Edith Piaf and Francois Hardy, but I was also influenced by English-speaking singers… Madonna, Kate Bush. I was always interested in singers who were more than singers. They can really be inside the song. When they sing, they are singing from the heart. And the only way I could do that was if I was singing in French. To have the lyrics become part of me, they had to be in my own language.

“People always ask if French is an easy language to sing in. For me, of course! I try to create movement and percussion with my voice. But I think that is the same with any language. When I listen to my favourite English singers – Kate Bush is a good example – she does so much with her voice. When she is up on stage, she is not just singing the lyrics. She is performing. She is acting. She is telling a story. I hope I can do the same.”

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