
Classic Tracks: Don McLean 'American Pie'
The story of Don McLean's 'American Pie' goes from cryptic beginnings to massive chart success, and an eventual position as a perennial US radio favourite.
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The story of Don McLean's 'American Pie' goes from cryptic beginnings to massive chart success, and an eventual position as a perennial US radio favourite.

We go through the keyhole of another SOS reader, and ask 'who inhabits a studio like this?'

Born of the fertile late‑'80s Manchester music scene, 808 State's 'Pacific State' was a landmark in British house music.

After three decades powering the rhythm section of the Rolling Stones, Bill Wyman has gone back to the music he grew up with, with help from the impressive array of talent that is his Rhythm Kings. Sam Inglis hears how their new album Double Bill was made.


Vinyl is still the listening format of choice for many consumers. Using it as a recording format is more of a challenge!

Regular readers will know that I'm partial to convolution in all its aspects, and have even given seminars exploring some of...


One of the most powerful of last year’s World War One centenary projects came from an unexpected source: legends of industrial music Einstürzende Neubauten.

This month we take a trip down memory lane with VFX Host, and visit App land to round up a few of our favourite tools.

Why would you use one? There are plenty of perfectly good recordings made in garden sheds, bedrooms and basements!

Thanks to years of experimentation with budget equipment, brothers Peter and David Brewis have developed into one of the UK's best and most interesting studio bands, with a sound that is very much their own.

Monitor mixing is riddled with compromises, but Allen & Heath hope to change all that with their intuitive ME1 personal foldback mixer.

When Peter Gabriel made the transition from prog to pop with 'Sledgehammer' he did it on his own exacting terms...

Thirteen acts playing two sets each, in an historic venue, with minimal changeover time? It's all in a day's work for our intrepid live‑sound engineer.

In working to perfect a Bollywood mix, our engineer found that there were plenty of lessons that could be drawn from it and applied to mixes in most genres.

Not only is this a remarkably high-quality microphone, but a very versatile one too, thanks to some cunning acoustic trickery...

Learn to customise Channel Strip Settings and stamp your own sound on Logic!

Once again, Waves have tried to bottle the magic of a celebrated mix engineer, so that it can be uncorked in the home studio...