Recording

Not many dance acts start life as string quartets — but Clean Bandit’s fusion of classical and electronic music has powered them to worldwide success.

Watch engineer/producer extraordinaire Eric Valentine as he crafts a shimmering surf guitar sound, in the vein of Smash Mouth or Third Eye Blind, that employs three amps and judicial use of modulation effects.

We sat down with songwriter/producer Jake Gosling ahead of his masterclass at ACM in Guildford, UK, to talk about creating better arrangements, getting the best out of performers, and the advantages of having a simple recording setup. 

Perhaps I do not understand the proximity effect very well! But my question is this: can you decrease the proximity effect solely by lowering the volume?

Maximising A Minimal Arrangement: Our engineer tackles the recording of some stripped-down electric-guitar and vocal arrangements.

Armed with nothing but an Atari, a pair of S950 samplers and his faithful TB303, Fatboy Slim took the charts of the late 1990s by storm.

Our engineer battles the clock while keeping the artists at ease, to capture seven tracks in a single weekend.

LA-based producer Eric Valentine (Queens Of The Stone Age, Slash) recreates the guitar sound from QOTSA's unique 2002 album, Songs for the Deaf. We look at every link in the chain from tuning and guitar choice through to amp settings, pedals, mic selection and post-processing.

In 1985 John Lydon found himself in a New York studio with producer Bill Laswell and a group of session musicians. The result was to become one of PiL’s most recognisable tracks.

David Crosby’s latest album has gained much praise for its sonics. The man who tracked and mixed it offers SOS readers the inside story — with audio examples.

I want to add a Cuica drum part to a Latin jazz fusion piece and have a nice Cuica drum similar size to the one in this...

Audiobook Recording: spoken word in the project studio presents a different set of challenges to most music productions.

Shirley Collins’ album Lodestar has been a long time coming. Thirty-eight years, in fact...

I’m using Ableton Live and bounced my last few finished tracks in the 32-bit float format. I’d rather not have too many different versions of the same tracks floating around, so is there a preferred word length for when I bounce files out for mastering?

The challenge of creating a glass-themed sound world for her third album led Agnes Obel to explore some little-used instruments and techniques.

Like their debut, Bastille’s Wild World was recorded in a South London basement — but this time around, the band were global superstars.

A few years ago I decided to concentrate on producing my own music. I’ve since spent thousands of hours going through...

The Avalanches’ debut album Since I Left You took the art of sampling to new heights — but it has taken them 16 years to finish the follow-up!