Recording

The Dust Brothers changed the course of record production with a new approach to sampling. In their first ever in-depth technical interview, John King and Mike Simpson explain their unique way of making records and open the doors of their remarkable LA studio, The Boat.

Greg Ladanyi showed up at the right time in rock history to chair sessions for Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Warren Zevon, Toto, Fleetwood Mac and the Jacksons — but while 50 percent of life may be simply showing up, the other half requires a lot of hard work.

Pop shields are essential for most modern studio productions, but what are they and why are they so important?

East Norfolk Sixth Form College needed help integrating their hardware multitracker with their computer sequencing system, so the SOS team travelled over to Great Yarmouth to lend a hand.

They might have been the greatest production team of the disco era, but even Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards could fall victim to the elitism of New York's club scene — and their response was the most memorable of all Chic's hits.

When DJs produce their own albums, the results can be mixed — but Laurent Garnier is not your average DJ, and his 'The Cloud Making Machine' is anything but a conventional house or techno record.

Having been one of the UK's most popular rock acts in the early '90s, Thunder found that record labels were no longer willing or able to promote their releases properly. Now they have taken matters into their own hands, using the Internet and new methods of distribution to get their records back in the charts.

Producer Stephen Hague took New Order into the studio with an ambitious brief: to write and record a single that would break the band in America.

Myles MacInnes (aka Mylo) has given the dance world a wake-up call with his Destroy Rock & Roll album, blending house music and '80s soft rock to surprising effect.

I'll be recording a viola player to provide the string section for a track I'm working on. The plan is to track each part multiple times and thus create a string ensemble...

Celebrities from around the world were keen to contribute to a fund-raising single for victims of the Asian tsunami, and converting all of this goodwill into a finished record required innovative use of broadband Internet to collect together their performances.

Producer, singer/songwriter Trevor Horn has been at the forefront of technological innovation since his earliest work with The Buggles, in a career that has yielded countless classic singles and albums.

As the '80s drew to a close, The Stone Roses made rock music cool again, melding '60s psychedelia and acid house under the production guidance of John Leckie.

I want to record eight tracks at once into my Akai DPS12 multitracker, which has six analogue inputs and a stereo S/PDIF...

I have been planning to record an upcoming choir concert with a centred ORTF stereo pair of Rode NT5 cardioids...

Imagine selling a million copies of your music in just over a week, with no video, no radio play and no touring. Impossible? Not if it's the soundtrack to one of the most successful computer games of all time...

Walter Taieb enjoyed worldwide success as a dance producer, before reinventing himself as a classical composer. Working with violin prodigy Vanessa-Mae tested both his orchestration skills and his music technology expertise.

Think your own music is good? Listen to these tracks from SOS readers and see whether you agree with the good Doctor's prognosis...

Stephen Street made his name as an engineer working with one of the most influential indie bands ever. He describes the sessions that created the title track of The Smiths' most celebrated album.

I edit completed mixes in Wavelab on my PC and then normalise them to 0dB and send them via digital link to an HHB Burnit CD writer. My problem is that the volume on the finished CD-R is very quiet when compared to commercial CDs...

Max Richter combines chamber music with ambient recordings, spoken-word pieces and experimental electronica, creating a distinctive and beautiful blend of the traditional and the futuristic.