Third Take

I recently purchased a pair of sound isolating earbuds for live use. At one of my guitar gigs, we have an in-ear monitor system and I wanted a nice pair of earbuds that would block out stage noise and let me hear the monitor system clearly. Then I had a brainstorm: why not use them when recording vocals in my home studio? Read more

If you want to export MP3s with Sonar, and don’t want to pay $19 for the Cakewalk encoder (or it doesn’t work on your system), there is a free encoder called LAME that can be integrated into Sonar. This tutorial will show you how to configure Sonar to encode MP3s with LAME. Read more

Most of us get into home recording because we want to record ourselves or our band. We soon realize that there is a steep learning curve, and making a recording that sounds “professional” is hard. If you are just starting out, your biggest obstacle is not lack of gear, software, or plugins, but lack of knowledge. You can make a good recording on minimal equipment, but if you don’t know how to work effectively, it can be very frustrating. There is nothing worse than getting several hours into a project and realizing that a mistake you made at the beginning has doomed your recording. Here are a few techniques to help you get off to a solid start. Read more

Electric guitar is one of the easiest instruments to record. Maybe it’s because I’m a guitar player and I know what I want a guitar to sound like, but I’ve never had a lot of trouble getting good electric guitar sounds recorded. Even so, there is a difference between good and great - here are five tips that have improved my recordings. Read more