Audio engineers and musicians have a habit of collecting things. Not only do they collect things, they collect things that are similar in nature and believe they are distinctly different. Furthermore, they collect them without actually testing to see if they are indeed different.

The topic of mastering is always popular. In this two-tutorial series I’m covering two mastering processes which are generally considered special treatments: MS processing and multiband processing.

Lead vocals, background vocals, samples, vocoders. Each type of vocal track, and each genre, require different techniques, microphones and gear. You want them to sound professional, on pitch, and full of life.

Vocals can carry both the meaning and emotions of a song, so you want to get them right. This can include choosing the right mic and mic placement, working with vocalists and choirs, capturing the right mood, the use of samplers and vocoders, and getting the mix right. There's a lot to learn! Here is a range of tutorials from basic to advanced that explain it all.

Mastering is the very last stage in music production before your tracks go out into the world. It's an important stage. If you skip it, your tracks are almost guaranteed to sound ‘weak’ when compared to like-sounding commercial material.

Editing audio can be quick and handy, or long and arduous. It is an essential skill that can make a tremendous difference to the final track. Modern DAWs give you almost unlimited editing power and flexibility. Here is a collection of tuts that help you make the most of that power.

One essential way to shape your sounds is compression, but using compression effectively takes knowledge, skill and experience. In these tutorials we explain what compression is, and when how to use it. We tackle buss, parallel, multi-band or side-chain compression.