Mixing / Production

All of the main MIDI + Audio sequencers now have a bewildering array of compression and limiting plug-ins built in, but many home musicians are unclear about what all those controls and options do. And with so many varieties of each plug-in available, which one should you choose for the job in hand?

Twenty years after Steve Levine first produced Culture Club, he reveals how he has been using a new generation of digital tools to restore those original recordings.

Many people love the idea of laptop recording, but few have put it into practice like 1 Giant Leap. Their acclaimed album and DVD project was recorded on an Apple Powerbook during a six-month journey round the world — with a little help from some friends...

Producer and engineer Elliot Mazer is well known for his ongoing work with Neil Young, and was there at the birth of digital recording. Like Young, however, he's never been happy with the way it sounded — until now.

Jack Wall is a leading light in the video game soundtrack industry, where his credits include the latest chapter in the best-selling Myst series of computer games.

Well-known jazz musician John Scofield has spent the last five years updating his sound with the help of modern technology and new collaborators - including innovative guitarist Avi Bortnick.

Composition runs in David Newman's family, and he's become one of Hollywood's most sought-after writers of music for film.

Film tie-in Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets will be one of the most sophisticated video games ever created, and the soundtrack alone has taken the designers from Surrey to Seattle — by way of a school toilet...

Can you advise on the powering and positioning of Behringer's Truth monitors? How can I control proximity effect? Why do speaker stands have spikes? Will Steinberg's Virtual Guitarist run on my PC? Will replacing my carpet with laminate affect the acoustics? Can you recommend a second-hand sampler with a floppy drive? How can I get broadcast masters to sound louder?

Pioneering electro-pop duo Soft Cell are back with a new album, seeking to combine the best of old and new production techniques.

The Avalanches' acclaimed debut album Since I Left You is composed almost entirely of samples from other records - but there's nothing lazy or unimaginative about their approach to recording...

One of the UK's most successful instrumentalists, Mike Oldfield is now embarking on a pioneering attempt to combine music and virtual reality.

All modern sequencers make it easy to enhance your arrangements with subtle tempo variations, but these facilities are often ignored.

Internationally renowned DJ John Digweed and studio partner Nick Muir make cutting-edge dance music as Bedrock.

From Rain Man to The Lion King, and Gladiator to Mission Impossible 2, Hans Zimmer's music is known by audiences worldwide. With business partner Jay Rifkin, Zimmer is also responsible for Media Ventures, a music studio that offers a unique environment for media composers.

Nashville is still a place of legend when it comes to music. Although overall sales of the city's flagship genre, country music, have dipped somewhat from their mid-'90s peak, Nashville still has a recording legacy matched by few cities in the world.

Not content with reviving and staging a 1920s avant-garde work for the first time, Paul D. Lehrman also worked out a way to reunite the piece with its contemporary film, which was never used due to technical problems. This is how...

Some engineers earn a reputation for classic recording techniques and live bands, while others help to create the cutting-edge sounds of modern rap and R&B. From Foreigner and the Rolling Stones to Timbaland and Missy Elliot, Jimmy Douglass has done both.

Mali Music is one of the most ambitious collaborations yet between European and African musicians. The brainchild of Blur frontman Damon Albarn, it also represented the first big break for producer Simon Burwell.

How can I use my external effects units with my Akai DPS16 hard disk recorder? How can I convert my mono recordings into stereo? Are there any cheap multi-band compression plug-ins? How can I reverse the effects of performing Windows XP tweaks?

With a software sampler such as Emagic's EXS24, creating multisampled instruments from your favourite patches on your hardware sound modules needen't be a chore.