Recording

This month we beef up drums and bass, polish guitars and vocals, and give choruses a lift, as the Belgian band Leaf get the Mix Rescue treatment.

Their combination of Southern soul and hip-hop gave Gnarls Barkley one of the biggest hits of the year, thanks in part to the mixing wizardry of Ben Allen.

Tired of the same old vocal sound? Time to get creative with your plug-ins, FX pedals and anything else you have!

The Scissor Sisters' first album, recorded in a Manhattan apartment, sold 3.5 million copies worldwide. The follow-up, Ta-Dah, sees them expanding their horizons, while keeping their DIY ethos very much intact.

With the powerful automation available in modern DAWs, it is easy to overlook their side-chaining features. But what value does this technique have in the modern project studio?

After 17 years mixing almost everything that came out of Jam & Lewis's Flyte Tyme Studios, there's very little Steve Hodge doesn't know about making R&B records work.

Podcasting is a powerful new communications medium that could help you get your music out to the masses — and it's accessible to pretty much anyone with a home studio and a broadband Internet connection.

Jim Abbiss decided to go back to basics and make records the way he wanted to make them. The result? The fastest-selling debut album in history...

The idea of bringing folk music up to date is not a new one, but few people have taken it quite as far as Jim Moray. His material may be traditional, but his approach to music technology is as modern as it gets.

Morph The Cat, Donald Fagen's third solo album in 24 years, sees Fagen and engineer Elliott Scheiner continue their quest for the best possible sound quality — which, it seems, comes only from analogue recording.

David Gilmour's chart-topping solo album was recorded on his own Astoria houseboat, a floating slice of studio heaven. Engineer Andy Jackson describes the making of the album.

Mike Elizondo has gone from being Dr Dre's right-hand man, co-writing some of the biggest hip-hop hits of recent years, to being an innovative producer in his own right.

When British traditional music got a dose of rock & roll excitement, it was an American who sat in the producer's chair. Oh, and Joe Boyd also discovered a little-known band called the Pink Floyd...

Everyone knows how much a classy vocal sound can add to any recording, but achieving this in the studio can seem something of a black art, so this month we demystify the recording, processing, and mixing techniques required to produce professional results.

In the past, tie-in video games have had to use samples to recreate real orchestral soundtracks from the original TV series or film. With 24: The Game, however, it was the other way around.

Kick drum and lead vocal present tough processing challenges in this installment's remix.

Recording the One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back album, Roy Thomas Baker and the Darkness used 400 reels of tape, up to 1,000 tracks per song and a year in the studio — not to mention custom-made panpipes. Find out more...

Craig Bauer has been part of Kanye West's career from the beginning, and as a mix engineer on the smash hit Late Registration album, he had to marry West's artistic perfectionism with his own technical standards.

The likes of Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins and Nine Inch Nails all owe a sonic debt to engineer/producer John Fryer, who explains his approach to production.

He took an unusual and unhurried career path, but Toby Wright has helped to create some of the most influential hard rock records of the last 20 years, including Metallica's definitive ...And Justice For All, and is now one of America's most sought-after engineers and producers.

The Go! Team's debut album, a glorious pile-up of mangled samples and lo-fi home recordings, is now attracting widespread acclaim — but its path to Mercury nomination and commercial success has been anything but smooth.