Music Production Archive
I’ve used 32-bit versions of Steinberg’s Cubase on Windows machines for over 15 years, and have come to rely on a fairly stable setup with all my favourite plugins to hand. I’d dabbled with the idea of going 64-bit before, but was limited by my trusty Tascam US-122, which never had dedicated 64-bit drivers written for it, and was generally poorly-supported after Windows XP (a ‘Vista-compatible’ driver was released, but it was pretty buggy). Only recently have I upgraded my machine to a lovely i7 with 16GB RAM, so it seemed a crying shame to stick with a version of …
That’s great! Being a sound engineer is a really rewarding (and fun) job to do, but have you really got what it takes? If you think that all you’ll be doing is setting up microphones and programming beats, think again. Are you happy to work long and unsociable hours? I mean really long and unsociable hours? If so, congratulations! Your life now belongs to the recording studio. Expect to work most weekday evenings (including Friday night), and all day Saturday and Sunday too. If you prefer to work a more regular nine-to-five, get a job at Tesco. You may find …
With many of the bands I have worked with, the phrase ‘pre-production’ is often used but seldom truly understood. The definition has changed over the years as recording techniques have evolved, yet the principles still remain; it is the preparation for the transition from rehearsal room to studio live room. To me, pre-production is an invaluable part of the recording process which can make or break a track – essentially allowing an outsider (i.e. someone who’s not in the band and who hasn’t previously been involved in neither the writing nor rehearsing of the material) to advise on any polishing …
Even before you open up Cubase, there are a few settings you can tweak in the Windows operating system itself. Firstly, you need to navigate to the ‘Advanced’ tab of the ‘System Properties’ dialog box. To do this: Right-click the ‘My Computer’ icon on the desktop Select ‘Properties’ Select the ‘Advanced’ tab Right-click the ‘Computer’ icon on the desktop Select ‘Properties’ Select ‘Advanced System Settings’ from the left-hand pane From here you need to click the ‘Settings…’ button in the ’Performance’ section. Now if you really want to squeeze every last bit of juice from your CPU and GPU you …
If you’re serious about your music making, you might want to invest some time thinking about your Windows installation, to really get the most out of your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). The following methodology can be applied to the installation of any music software package for the Windows platform and not just Cubase. Having performed many installations of Cubase and Nuendo over the years, I have learnt that generally the computers I install on fall into the following three categories: General use PC – Your average PC used for everything from playing games to word processing to surfing the internet. …
This article is primarily aimed at anyone on a really tight budget, and who is looking to record one or two (or maybe more!) tracks in a day. While an eight or ten hour day may seem like a long stretch in the studio, time does in fact pass surprisingly quick. With this in mind, it pays to be as organised as possible. Here are some basic things to consider for you recording session… I know this is an obvious one, but I’ve been in situations before where the band I’ve been working with has started tracking a song without …