Sometimes when you are recording a new track it is good to turn off the metronome and auto-quantize using your software, just hit record, and play from the heart. A spontaneity and more human quality can be captured in the performance. This works particularly well with solo guitar or piano.

Or maybe you want to use some audio from a live recording or a studio session where no click track was used. When it comes to adding other sequenced parts to audio that has been recorded in this way it can be difficult to get the timing of the midi notes right. The metronome and auto-quantize will be out of sync with the audio.

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Recording drums is a bit of a lost art. Engineers used to spend a year experimenting with mics before they were allowed near a Fairlight or a Synclavia (old school samplers for the young among you).

There was no Logic Pro, plug-ins or even very good effects, so it was all down to clever mic techniques and improvisation. Here’s a few tricks I picked up over the years—tips and tricks which come in handy time and time again.

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In the last EXS tutorial, we looked at the basic steps needed to build a unique sampled instrument using Logic’s EXS Sampler. This tutorial will take it to the next level as we learn how to build a more complex instrument using multiple samples.

Several months back my friend and colleague Michael Teoli and I were sitting around the kitchen when we started to tap on empty glass bottles. As I’m sure all of you have done at some point, we started to “play” the bottles and see what tunes we could come up with.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could sample these bottles and make them into an instrument?” we wondered, and on went the lightbulb above our heads. Enter EXS.

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I’ve been a professional sound engineer for 18 years, so when I got involved in making an independent movie, I thought recording the audio shouldn’t present too many problems. How wrong I was. Here’s how to avoid all the mistakes I made, and record high quality audio for your movies.

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Pulling off an excellent studio performance can be difficult. The environment is, for most of us, daunting and cold, even if we’ve spent a lot of time in it. But there are many ways you can give yourself the advantage and improve your comfort with that environment. Give them all a shot, and what could go wrong?

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For the neophyte, the studio can be a place of myth and legend. It’s complicated and takes many years of learning and hands-on experience to become a talented studio engineer or producer. It’s not at all helped by the amount of misinformation that has been distributed about studio recording, unfortunately; let’s clear up a few of these myths.

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Stereo miking is a great way to increase the sense of depth in your recording of an instrument. Here are six stereo miking techniques you can try out today. We’ll start with the basics and then move to some more exciting options.

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Finally, your project has the budget for a nice studio with a good microphone closet. When you get there, you want to make sure you are acquainted with common studio microphones so you make wise and informed miking decisions when it’s time to record.

Here is a casual rather than technical walkthrough of some microphones you are likely to encounter in any professional recording studio, and how to get the most out of them when the time comes. Plus: prepare for some eye-candy!

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Making music is perhaps one of the most expensive hobbies in the world—that is, aside from tasting truffles. When you’re looking to set up a decent home studio, it’s hard to find a way to stay within budget without ending up with a terrible sound. Here are ten options to minimize expenditure while still getting a decent sound out of your system at the end of the day, by buying smart when it comes to one of the most important types of studio equipment: microphones.

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How much do you know about micamps? Should technology guide your choices? Or maybe you’re happy to use whatever is around, but sometimes you’d like to have a more informed approach to recording? This tutorial will help you choose the colour you’re missing from your canvas.

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