Recording

I am a regular reader and consider myself fairly well informed, but I'm struggling to find the answer to a really simple...

A friend of mine who is a full-time professional musician has recently bought a new PA and now wants to fit permanent...

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.

In 1979, at the end of a 13-way bidding war, The Knack went into the studio to record their debut single — a debut single that would go gold in seven days and sell six million copies worldwide. This is the story of how it came to be...

Japan's YMO helped pioneer the use of electronic instruments and sampling. Now Uwe Schmidt, aka Señor Coconut, has used the same techniques to render their greatest hits as Latin dances, with contributions from all three original YMO members.

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.

The Reckless album was a huge success for Bryan Adams, giving rise to six hit singles — but the first one, 'Run To You', was almost never even recorded.

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.

Producers Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley helped to make Madness one of the most successful British bands of the '80s. Find out how they worked their magic on this 1982 classic pop track...

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...

I have a five-piece drum kit with the three standard cymbals. I am trying to get the best sound possible on a very small...

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.

The Brothers In Arms album turned Dire Straits into one of the biggest-selling bands of all time, thanks to some technical innovation, tough decision-making, and that guitar sound — which was created by accident. Find out how they did it...

Country Music's greatest showcase, the Grand Ole Opry, is a bastion of traditional values — and the home of some seriously advanced technology. Step inside...

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.

Do I really need to use a 'matched pair' of microphones, or even two mics of the same make and model, for stereo recording...

If you have two bits of gear that you'd like to run into your computer interface via S/PDIF, do you need two S/PDIF inputs?

Three decades after they disappeared into obscurity, the cult of Big Star continues to grow. John Fry was the engineer and studio owner at Ardent, who oversaw the recording of their now-classic albums #1 Record and Radio City.

I have been reading the book Mastering Audio by Bob Katz. In it he addresses the issue of the detrimental occurance of comb filtering when recording in stereo and then combining the signals in a single track...

Each time I record audio I get a continuous buzz and high-frequency noise recorded along with any music. It is clearly audible during intros, quieter passages and outros. However, when my screensaver comes on, this noise drops considerably...