Recording

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.

Since emerging from the Liverpool music scene at the turn of the '80s, Ian Broudie has juggled parallel careers as an artist and a producer. He has a new solo disc in the shops, and with albums by the Coral and the Zutons riding high in the charts, his production services are in greater demand than ever.

Mike Hedges made his 1980 debut as a producer with one of The Cure's most enduring singles. 'A Forest' and the accompanying Seventeen Seconds album used his and the band's creativity in the studio to the full.

Sade's ice-cool vocals and sophisticated, jazz-tinged instrumentation defined a new kind of soul music for the '80s. Engineer and producer Mike Pela describes the organic recording process that produced one of the singer's most memorable hits from 1985.

After more than 20 years making uncompromising industrial records, pioneering German band Einstürzende Neubauten escaped a creative and financial crisis through an Internet project which allowed their fans to influence the recording of their latest album.

Fed up with being treated badly by spoilt divas, engineer Mark Nevers abandoned the country music establishment to start his own studio, and has made a name for himself on the 'other side' of Nashville.

Can you explain once and for all why the speed at which you burn a CD should make a difference to the quality of the audio?