Hi Steve, really do appreciate the work you have done so far and I think this tips and tricks concept is also a fantastic idea. One thing I've alway wanted to know more about is mixing. It's always going to be down to the individual's ear when they are working on their own material but work flows are always appreciated. Templates, even down to the levels of individual channels to start off with before layering further. Levels to try and achieve before final mastering tweaking. Best ways of tuning the kick to the bass for maximum punch, achieveing power in the low end... If you are stem mixing, what kind of EQ and compression etc, is/ can be used. Drum programming is also a bit of a black art. Adding that touch of humanisation and the best ways of nudging notes here and there would also be an interesting topic to cover. And as a lot of other people have mentioned... more tips and tricks in the environment is always going to go down well! Once again, thanks for everything you and the MacProVideo team have done so far. Great work. Yours, John

Hi Steve, yeah I thought you might say something like that!... and you're perfectly right, mixing isn't logic, it's using logic.. but yes, the techniques and tools are still just as relevant so if you are able to squeeze anything about them in to a future tutorial that would be brilliant. Incidentally, if you know of any resources to help with mixing that you could point me to, that would be 110% hugely appreciated :) I've read mixing with your mind by Stav and that was def worth a read... but getting things to gel.. outside of feathering eq.. and retaining power down at the low end... all things that are quite hard to get right and if you don't know what you are doing, it feels like you're going round in circles! Thanks for your quick response. Cheers, John

Hi Steve, I'll second the beat mapping request too. I think I have most of the beat mapping sorted... but I do tend to fluke it.. well, it feels that way! Tap tempo and remixing existing recordings... good idea for a tutorial! Cheers, John

Hi Steve, thanks again for the tutorial this month. I am always looking for ways to get natural sounding drums programming wise and the hyper editor looks like it'll hit the spot. The beat mapping side of things too is also of huge interest to me so thanks for choosing that for this month. One subject that I would like to see covered is the calculating and offsetting of delays when bouncing in and out of the computer. For example. You program some drums yet want to process them with outboard gear. For instance, run the sounds through a guitar amp, miking and recording back in to layer with the original programmed beat. Are there methods that you use for making sure recording offsets are in place to prevent delays/ phase cancellations etc or do you nudge graphically and by ear? Any thoughts appreciated :) Fantastic work thus far though.. truly. Regards, John

If it sounds right it is right afterall!

Hi Steve, I imagine that you're well on the way with this months up your sleeve tutorials but my recent experiments have really highlighted that I'm crap with the transform function and converting internal signals to other signals to manipulate other... signals. Any help in this area would be much appreciated from my point of view... and if you know anyone out there with some trick environments that we could have look at that would be choice! Swiftkick.com is a good resource but I have had compatibility issues in the past seeing as a lot of it was written on much older versions of logic.

Hey Jake, I take it you weren't at THE ice hockey match the other day where it was team vs team in a massive punch up in the rink? You could have got some interested live recorded sounds from that gig I bet!

...and I just tried that recording of the arp in the arrange Steve... bloody brilliant! Thank you :)

Vocoder stuff would be cool.. as would knowing a little bit more about the tuning preferences under song settings. I've had a look in there before but couldn't work out the impact on different instruments and their scales. Can you, for example, randomise the out of tuneness (there's my word for the day) for specific instruments, as in, say you chose South Indian Vina, acc. to Ellis and used that for a Grand piano, can you get it to twist the tuning of the piano? I've selected all kinds of things in there with seemingly no effect. Can it be extended to a more practical use instead of experimental type sounds and say make a honky tonky bar piano out of a grand? All these questions and more, coming to a computer screen near you....

... now would you look at that.. I mean... I knew that. So, what exactly do the tuning pref settings.. do?