When putting together melody laden projects arpeggiators can be an indispensable tool. Before you get stuck into your first arpeggiated patterns it's worth becoming familiar with the basic modes and t

If you are new to Cubase and are just getting the hang of production you may be slightly overwhelmed by the myriad of plug-ins you are presented with. Cubase now bundles an impressive array of process

The Compressor: a wonderful device that makes our music "POP", sound full and bring up that detail, open up that track from behind the door. The compressor is one of the most talked about, most used,

When it comes to processing your sounds there are literally endless lists of plug-ins to choose from. With all this choice it's quite likely that you've overlooked one key device in your collection, t

The technologies that have powered electronic music have come a long way.  Since the first Moog synthesizers appeared on the scene, musicians have been wanting to plug instruments together to make th

Unless you've been away from any human contact (including email and web access) for the past couple of weeks you'll likely have heard about NAMM!  NAMM, the National Association of Music Merchants, i

When enhancing your sounds with EQ there is a fine line between a light sweetening and an over-colored, or over-hyped end result. Most of the time any negative results are due to too much additive equ

To many updating and installing drivers is something of a chore. However, keeping up to date can actually improve your creative sessions by ensuring that your system is running in peak condition. Let'

Ask the majority of sound engineers or producers and they'll tell you there is no substitute for real double tracking. Saying that not all of us have the time (or the vocalist!) to create authentic do

Whenever you need to remove low frequency from a sound, you may reach for your newest equalizer plug-in. This is fine but a simple high pass filter will often suffice. This approach can save time and

Chances are that if you're reading this blog post, or you are surfing around macProVideo.com, you want to improve your audio mixing skills. After all, it is the "Minds Ear" which creates the mental im

Logic 9 comes bundled with masses of loops, instruments and effects. Best of all, the instruments and effects can be highly customized! Once you've made changes to the settings of any plug-in, it's cu

There are a lot of guitar simulation plug-ins available for digital musicians these days. Included with Logic 9 is Amp Designer and Pedal Board - a welcome departure from the older Guitar Amp Pro plug

I have a confession to make... I'm addicted to creating weird (and sometimes wonderful) sound effects in Logic. There's something undeniably satisfying about stretching, flexing, effecting, warping, a

Auto Modulation in Max for Ableton Live One of the wonderful things about max for live is the fact that you can modulate any parameter in Ableton Live that is automatable.  For example, using a si

Sound Hacking in Max4live Spectral analysis is one of the more advanced ways to exert more control over your audio material. Electronic Musicians have been using this technique to refine the timbral q

Sibelius without doubt is one of the best applications for notating music out there (if you ask me it's the best), but its wealth of features come at a price. Actually I don't mean that it is hard to

Tonight I am in the studio with local legend Mike Anderson, master storyteller, composer of children's music, and dulcimer player.  We will be recording directly to a Tascam CD-Recorder through a Ma .

Cleaning up noisy audio recordings Nobody likes a noisy recording. You know, whether it be a recording of guitars, drums or most of all spoken word... the hiss or hum of background noise, traffic, com

Put away your Upright basses, your fretless 5 strings and your Electronic-synth hardware Bass modules... Trilian is here! With over 34GB of some of the most delicious low end sounds ever created, T

Cubase 5 from Steinberg comes bundled with some great instrument and effect plugins. From Loop Mashers to reverb units, filters, compressors... But, I'm a firm believer that you can never have too m