The compressor is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal when mixing your tracks. Almost all DAWs come with at least one compressor plugin. At the same time it’s probably the most misused. If you’re like me, you probably have a basic idea of what a compressor does, but no clear […]
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Since I reviewed the then-leading iOS guitar interfaces, a lot of new products have entered the market. One is the GuitarJack from Sonoma Wire Works. The nice people at Sonoma sent me the Guitar Jack model 2 for review for review. Overview The GuitarJack 2 is a docking-port interface like the Apogee Jam, unlike the […]
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If you do most of your playing at home and don’t have a band (my band is currently just two guitarists jamming on Sundays for instance, on break for the summer at that) but still want to make songs, you are going to be using virtual drums. You should consider yourself lucky, because nowadays there […]
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This is the third and final part of a series. You’ll find the previous parts here: Writing Your First Song Part I: Creating Riffs Writing Your First Song Part II: Recording and Arranging The Other Instruments Having recorded your guitar tracks and decided the order of the different parts you are ready to put them […]
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Using software amplification simulators, or amp sims for short, is becoming increasingly popular. The benefits are many, you can tweak your sound endlessly, switch between different amp sims trying to find the best tone for your song. A drawback is that an amp sim not properly tuned can generate digital artifacts giving away that it’s […]
Read more Remember how I urged bands to sell us, the unorganized global league of bedroom guitarists making covers, official multi-stem backing tracks? Well, apparently something is happening is that department! One of the pioneers in this area is Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who have released stems for their songs under the creative commons license […]
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This is the second part in a three part series. You find the first part here: Writing Your First Song Part I: Creating Riffs. When you have a bunch of riffs you need to arrange them into a song. A song normally has (all or some of) the following building blocks (borrowing a bit from […]
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There are three basic ways of recording guitar: miking up an amp, use a digital amp modeller or direct input. The first two record a “wet” signal, with effects like distortion already present in the sound. The third records a “dry” signal with the signal unmodified as it comes from the guitar output jack. 1. […]
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I’m currently reading an ebook dubbed “Why Do Your Recordings Sound Like Ass?” or WDYRSLA. It’s really not a book per se, it’s a collection of posts in a thread of the same name in the Reaper forums. It has 261 pages and contains things every home studio owner really must know. Even if you’re […]
Read moreThe end of 2011 is rapidly approaching. A great guitar year for me personally and a great first year for this blog in its latest and greatest incarnation. Here are the posts that are most popular – my favorites and yours (according to statistics). Why There is no AmpKit for Android – My most popular […]
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