Award Sounds Music, Photography and Consultancy

I've been looking for a nice small electronics project so I took some time out to build a new guitar fx pedal. I've never really seen the point of a fuzz pedal, always seemed to deteriorate the signal too much for my liking. I do like boost pedals, especially nice clean ones that push the preamp just to the point where it starts to distort the signal nicely.

Triboost  read more »

Compressors are regularly used to tame errant dynamics or to increase the perceived volume of a track. As well as squashing the audio, the compressor can be used to bring out some elements more than others.

Letting the attack through  read more »

However, I love putting an ordinary audio track through a plug-in and working through the presets, especially those presets that it's not designed for.  read more »

I've talked about tremolo as a musical feature before, this time I want to go into more detail.

First things first, let's sort out the guitarists: I don't mean using the tremolo arm/whammy bar or whatever you want to call it ("handle" as my girlfriend called it - and no she won't be picking up my guitars for a while). The whammy bar creates a vibrato feature, not a tremolo. Vibrato alters pitch.

Amplitude  read more »

Articles 41-50 in the Musical Creativity Series

13. Meet Other people

13a avoid being recluse

Composing music can be a solitary activity. For some that works, for others it can be a lonely experience. Whatever the perspective, it can quickly turn into isolation. Collaborating with others reduces the isolation.

13b friends

I've met most of my best friends through music and music-related activities. Some of the people I met as acquaintances have turned into good friends over time.  read more »

Even arranging a loan with your bank manager is a form of collaboration. Ok, it's a purchase of a product by you from them, but if responsible, then the bank should be acting in partnership with you. I'm working on a few projects where I can see finances becoming an issue in the medium term. I could also see a few of the project members funding their own areas. None could fund the whole project, but as each could fund their own area, the project could still work. It's like pooling resources but more controlled.

8. Opportunities  read more »

4a Fresh Pair of Ears

A producer should remain distant enough from the in-depth recording process to be able to bring a fresh opinion. Their view can suggest new directions or, at least, a validation of the current direction.

4b Motivation  read more »

A short series of articles on collaborating with other people to make your music better, make it heard or to help them move their music forwards.

1. Recording

1a Engineer  read more »

Take an old track and change the style of it.

I'm amazed how many tracks can be given more life by changing the style of music. I pick tracks that I've never fully finished to my satisfaction and apply a different musical style to them.

Identify the original style

What's wrong with the original track?  read more »