For those of us that love home music recording, your MIDI keyboards are an essential item in the age of software music production. If you own a MIDI keyboard, you might have been busy cutting tracks and making recordings. Then, suddenly, you notice that your MIDI keyboard is dishing out the wrong notes. What…
How to remove or isolate vocals is a concept that comes up often in sound engineering. Whether it’s to remove the vocals to create an instrumental version or removing the instrumentals to leave a voice-only track, this is a sound engineering skill that is in high demand. So how do you remove or isolate vocals…
You may be a professional musician, or you may be just playing around with music and sounds at home. Either way, you’ve probably considered recording your music and sounds. At-home recording doesn’t have to be hard or expensive, even when it comes to recording guitar. Do you need a preamp to record guitar? No,…
If you’re looking for a great side hustle that offers the opportunity to make a little extra income, then consider using your home studio for some extra cash. If you don’t have a home studio yet, don’t worry, we’ll cover some essentials about how you can set one up if you are looking for…
I had a friend tell me once that a monitor was better than a regular speaker for my home entertainment system. While I can easily see how this misconception can be reached, it is not that simple of an answer. They are both useful for your home studio. Also, both have different characteristics for…
All microphones have hissing and buzzing noises, but sometimes we might not even notice it until we turn on the microphone. While this can be very frustrating, here are some ways to look for cause and finally fix your buzzing mic. How to fix a buzzing condenser mic? First, run some diagnostics. Check the…
As an aspiring sound engineer, I kept wondering why some engineers use two or more microphones to record vocals, and yet the human voice is a mono instrument. Should you record vocals in mono or in stereo? If you are recording the vocals of one singer in a booth, then you should record in…
Your studio is all set up, and you finally decided to start recording. You start singing, then listen to the playback, only to realize that every single word you say sounds muffled. You look at your condenser mic, and can only wonder what happened. Why would your condenser mic sounds muffled? There are many…
What’s more annoying than playing back something you recorded and hearing a barely audible hiss in the background? Or any other noise that shouldn’t be there? You didn’t spend all the time and money setting up a system to record music to have it be ruined by noisy studio monitors. So, what’s going on?…
When you’re recording vocals, the level of decibels (dB) you record at is important. If you record the vocals at a level that is too quiet, they will not be understood over the other tracks on the mix, such as the instrumentals or the backbeat. If you mix them too loudly, they will…