Practicing bass guitar at home without any sort of amplification just doesn’t feel the same! But getting those hours of practice in without annoying your family members or neighbors means playing through a normal amp isn’t an option either. Step up the bass headphone amplifier! These amazing little machines, also known as ‘amPlugs’ plug directly…
Audacity is free, open-source audio software that can be used for basic audio production. The fact it costs nothing means it is a popular choice for beginners or those on a budget. As you progress to make more complex music within this piece of software you may ask can you use a MIDI keyboard in…
When you start out wanting to make music at home and you look at lists of essential equipment, one item that is now marked under ‘essential’ in modern music production is a digital audio workstation or DAW for short. These pieces of computer software are where you will build your audio creations. The problem is…
When you buy a new pair of studio monitors, people might recommend that they need to be “broken in”, “burned in” or “run in”. What does this mean? Is “breaking in” important? Do monitors need some time to reach their full potential? Or is breaking in speakers a myth? Most music industry professionals and many…
Studio monitors are often expensive, and for that reason, a lot of people wonder if they can get away with using just one single studio monitor. This will mean you can only listen and mix in ‘mono’ rather than the stereo field that comes from two speakers. But does it work? Can you still get…
For those who haven’t listened yet, the Tunelighting podcast is a series documenting the creation of a musical album from scratch in just one year. I and my friend Jack decided we spend all our time talking and blogging about music but never actually really finish anything ourselves! We are about 6 months into the…
When you see someone using a MIDI controller, it looks like the unit is producing the sound that is triggered, and it is also easy to assume that it is coming from inbuilt speakers. Are MIDI controllers sophisticated to include all of this? Are they truly all-in-one solutions or do you need to connect other…
There are so many different types of cables available these days that music studios can end up a tangled mess. Although many of these cables are necessary to get equipment to work, if we can get a chance to reduce the number of cables this can only be a good thing. Bass and Guitar are…
To anyone new to the world of music production MIDI can be a confusing thing to get your head around. Particularly for anyone who, like me, already knew how to play the piano or another instrument. But once you learn to understand MIDI you begin to unlock an extremely powerful (and arguably essential) tool in…
If you are relatively new to synthesis, you might notice that many synthesizers have similar controls and designs, and assume that they all have the same characteristics. Do all synths sound the same? What actually determines the sound a synth makes? To understand this we need to look a little bit at how synthesizers work…