July 2009
On sale now at main newsagents and bookstores (or buy direct from the SOS Web Shop)
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Welcome to the SOUND ON SOUND web site, the home of the world's premier music recording technology magazine.
 If you enjoy the SOS approach to recording articles, and wish a quality magazine existed for Live Sound, then check out our sister publication PERFORMING MUSICIAN.  We've been publishing our magazine since 1985; however, this web site houses our vast, continually-expanding archive of highly informative articles from January 1994 onwards, which reveals the impact of technology on the music production and recording process.
Every month, SOS print magazine delivers an unequalled mix of detailed, hands-on Product Tests of cutting-edge music hardware/software, covering all aspects of sound acquisition, editing and playback. Our producer/engineer/musician Interviews are second to none and there's a goldmine of "how to" Workshops and Tutorials (in the Technique section) to help you get the most out of your gear — whatever your level of expertise. Search our treasure chest of current and archive articles
Articles on this site generally fall into 5 broad categories: Hidden behind the SEARCH menu button (above) is a powerful search engine and it is the best way to quickly find material, but most articles include useful sidebar links to related material you might like to investigate.
SOS is one of the few magazines in any sector to publish the entire editorial contents of our current print magazine online (we call this the eSub), for the benefit of our ever-growing global community of subscribers. Some of the regular columns (eg. Sounding Off, Leader etc) and some teaser reviews are free for everyone to access. After 5 months, we unlock the current issue and add its articles to the 11,800+ available FREE on the soundonsound.com via the SOS Search engine, ready to answer your many questions and assist you in selecting the most appropriate tools for your music recording studio.
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Classic Tracks
Producer: Tony Clarke • Engineer: Derek Varnals Thunderous reverbs, haunting vocals and Mellotron galore: we tell the story of recording the Moody Blues’ symphonic rock masterpiece, ‘Nights In White Satin’.
Producer: John Lennon • Engineers: Roy Cicala, Shelly Yakus Engineer Roy Cicala worked on all of John Lennon’s albums from Imagine onwards, and in ‘Whatever Gets You Thru The Night’, recorded the only solo number one hit single of Lennon’s lifetime.
Producer: Van Morrison • Engineers: Shelly Yakus, Elliot Scheiner On his second solo album, Van Morrison took the production reins for the first time. Manning the desk was engineer Shelly Yakus, who tells the story of recording Moondance.
Producer: Heavy Zebra • Engineer: Kevin Byrne Blighted by drug abuse and mental illness, Heavy Zebra never fulfilled their early promise. Nevertheless, the deranged majesty of their 1972 single ‘Karla’ makes it a bona fide classic track.
Producers: George Goldner, Terry Johnson • Engineer: Allen Weintraub This is the story of how an inspired rearrangement of an old song created a track that, 50 years on, remains a genuine and enduring classic.
Producers: Stock, Aitken and Waterman Producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman developed a massively successful formula for making pop records — and the story of Rick Astley’s 1987 smash hit, ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, is a perfect guide to the SAW assembly line...
Classic Tracks In 1977 Status Quo brought in producer Pip Williams to help them clean up their act. The result was a hit album and a best-selling single — 'Rockin' All Over The World'.
The Pogues 'Fairytale Of New York' A Christmas song was an unexpected move from a group like the Pogues, but the story of heartbreak and pain that is 'Fairytale Of New York' eventually became the band's biggest commercial success.
Classic Tracks For mixing Kraftwerk's synthetic beats and simple melodies with New York rap, 'Planet Rock' can be credited with creating an entirely new genre: hip-hop. This is how it happened...
Producer: Paul Simon • Engineer: Roy Halee Paul Simon's Graceland album combined a huge mixture of musical styles and was recorded in studios all over the world. The man responsible for putting it all together, both sonically and physically, was Simon's long-time engineer Roy Halee. This is how he did it...
Producers: Devo, Robert Margouleff • Engineers: Robert Margouleff, Howard Siegel Armed with a subversive view of society and a command of catchy synth-pop, Devo burst into the charts in 1980 with weird classic 'Whip It'. Producer Robert Margouleff talks de-evolution...
Producer: Mike Chapman • Engineer: Peter Coleman The partnership between Blondie and producer Mike Chapman created a perfect pop record - and catapulted the group from the underground to mainstream chart success.
Producers: Ray Minshull, Michael Woolcock • Engineers: James Lock, Kenneth Wilkinson Recording opera requires a completely different approach, environment and technique to pop or rock music — a fact that has seldom been better demonstrated than in Pavarotti's 1972 recording of 'Nessun Dorma'.
Producer: Trevor Horn • Engineers: Steve Lipson, Julian Mendelsohn The debut single from Liverpool's Frankie Goes To Hollywood was the result of adventurous production and enjoyed massive chart success - as well as creating a great deal of controversy.
Producer: Jean Beauvoir • Engineer: Fernando Kral Undisputed kings of the three-chord thrash and arguably responsible for punk rock, it took over 10 years and the theme song to a Stephen King film to secure serious US chart success for the Ramones...
Producers: Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, Eddie Holland One of the most famous record labels of all time, Motown fostered a group of uniquely talented writers, engineers and musicians who often had to invent the equipment and techniques they used to keep their music at the cutting edge. Lamont Dozier explains how it was done...
Producer: Al Kooper • Engineers: Al Kooper, Rodney Mills In 1973, a band from Florida and California went to a studio in Georgia to record a song, provoked by a Canadian, about Alabama - and managed to define the sound of Southern rock while they were at it.
Producers: Chip Young, Billy Swan; Engineer: Chip Young In 1974 Billy Swan walked into Chip Young's Young'un Sound studio and, in two takes, recorded a million-selling single that had taken him 20 minutes to write. This is how it was done...
Track: 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick' The story of how a characteristically chaotic and unorthodox 1978 recording session took Ian Dury & The Blockheads to the top of the UK charts.
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Audio Interfaces | Recording Systems
Microphones Keyboards Synth Workstations Music Software | Plug-ins
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Mic Preamps
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Digidesign PRO TOOLS techniques
Apple LOGIC techniques
Cakewalk SONAR techniques
Steinberg CUBASE techniques
Propellerhead REASON techniques
MOTU DIGITAL PERFORMER techniques
Mixers
Effects
Stereo/Portable Recorders |
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