How-To Guides 5
A Guide to Distorted Bass Guitar
In the dark, mysterious world of heavy music, the guitar reigns supreme, sitting atop a craggy mountain on a throne of crushed skulls. If you want to riff hard, usually you grab a guitar, drop the tuning down, plug into your favorite fuzz and start chugging. If you follow conventional wisdom though, the bass guitar, sitting […]
Beat Techniques: Dub Production
Welcome to Beat Connection, a series dedicated to promoting modern and vintage dance styles the only way we know how…by providing you a musical starting point to help you create that beat. In the main bulk of our posts, we’ve been taking you on a journey to what I’d dub “foundational beats.” These foundational beats […]
A Guide to Finding Your Perfect Snare Drum
The centerpiece of your drum kit, the most addictive thing to collect in all of drumming — the punchy, fat or attacking snare drum. It’s no secret that the snare drum is one of the sexiest pieces of modern drum kits, and with so many different materials, colors and sizes, it’s easy to get lost […]
1965 Gibson LG-0 Vintage Acoustic Guitar
Hello. My name is Patrick and I’m a guitar addict. My most recent acquisition is a vintage 1965 Gibson LG-0 acoustic guitar. This model was Gibson’s student level guitar when it was released in 1958 since it lacks some features and has laminated back and sides. The guitar isn’t in mint condition. It has a […]
The Trials and Tribulations of DIY Sound Treatment
My band and I have been rehearsing in the same building since 2014. It’s one of those “warehouse-turned-band-practice-space-compound” type of deals that you come across in big cities like Chicago — except it never turned fully “practice space.” In its original form, our building was a cold storage facility in the Stockyards industrial district of […]
Side-chain Compression
Sometimes mixes can feel a little cluttered, especially when the song features a dense instrumentation. As audio engineers, we have to find creative ways to manage the density of the projects that we are working on. The side chain input on a compressor can be a useful tool for managing this musical density. Typically, a […]
Double-Tracking Electric Guitars
Ever since digital recording surpassed analog as the norm, musicians have been exploiting the format to its fullest capabilities, not only to streamline workflows, but to also create new and interesting sounds. The ability to copy and paste regions in your DAW has really helped producers and mixers push creative boundaries in the last few […]
True Peak Limiting
At first glance, limiting seems like a straightforward concept. Audio that peaks at -0.1 dB is audio that peaks at -0.1 dB, right? Well, unfortunately for people who are mastering their own tracks, it’s not quite that simple. But with a little knowledge of true peaks vs. sample peaks, and of how to set your […]
A Lesson in Preparing Drums for Studio Recording
Here at zZounds we’ve covered what it takes to prepare for your next recording session. But we need to get specific on the real backbone of the band’s recording session, the drums. The percussive rhythms coming from behind the lead singer are extremely important in not only keeping time, but emoting the overall feel and […]
