Tag: plugins

  • Ben Marshall’s Problem-Solution Approach to Mixing Vocals

    Ben Marshall’s Problem-Solution Approach to Mixing Vocals

    + Recording and mixing your vocals at home? Grammy-winning artist Kimbra explores how to harness the full creative potential of your music in her new course! To me, vocals are always the hardest thing to get right in a mix. I’m always looking for a balance between clarity and excitement. When the vocals are too forward,…

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  • Sax in the Box – How I Coaxed a Galaxy of Sound out of Splice’s New Sample Pack

    Sax in the Box – How I Coaxed a Galaxy of Sound out of Splice’s New Sample Pack

    Here at Soundfly, we love it when our favorite artists go out and create tools that are universally useful to producers of all kinds. That’s why I was ecstatic to find out that one of our own, Flypaper author and jazz composer, Mike Casey, was producing a one-of-a-kind saxophone sample pack with our friends at Splice, called “Sounds…

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  • The 5 Best Digital Synths for Bass Sounds

    The 5 Best Digital Synths for Bass Sounds

    There’s no getting around it, and the science is in: Bass is crucial for giving your songs both impact and coherence. It also, apparently, hits our emotions in just the right way. The upshot of all this is that you’d be selling your songs short of that emotional pull if you don’t bolster your tracks with…

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  • Hyperbits’ Guide to Layering and Humanizing Pianos

    Hyperbits’ Guide to Layering and Humanizing Pianos

    Make your digital MIDI productions sound more organic with these helpful tips for layering pianos from electronic music producer Hyperbits!

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  • Mixing Tips for Achieving a Tighter Bass

    Mixing Tips for Achieving a Tighter Bass

    Big, powerful bass is an important part in most recordings. But it’s also very easy to let it get out of hand and muddy up the mix. In this article, we’ll look at key ways to manage your bass for a better sounding track. Hearing accurately is the first battle. One of the toughest things…

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  • The 5 Best Free VST Compressor Plugins (with Free Presets!)

    The 5 Best Free VST Compressor Plugins (with Free Presets!)

    We searched for five of the best free compression VST/AU plugins out there. Compression is an indispensable tool for the music producer found across individual tracks, mix buses, and mastering chains. Compressors are used for narrowing dynamic range, manipulating amplitude envelopes, peak limiting, and more. They’re also well-known for having distinct characteristics depending on the circuitry…

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  • Photay on Being Terrified by ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ and How to Mess with Song Form

    Photay on Being Terrified by ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ and How to Mess with Song Form

    Welcome back to Soundfly’s new interview series, Incorrect Music, curated by guitarist, singer, and composer Lora-Faye Åshuvud (of the band Arthur Moon). In this series, we present intimate conversations with artists who are striving to push the boundaries of their process and craft. On his latest release, Onism, Photay’s Evan Shornstein combines his study of West African…

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  • Boring but Useful: How to Prep a Mix in Ableton Live

    Boring but Useful: How to Prep a Mix in Ableton Live

    + Master the tools and techniques of producing pro-level electronic music and audio in Ableton Live with Soundfly’s course, Intro to Music Production in Ableton Live. One of the dullest parts of production, but one of the most important for properly finishing a track, is preparing to mix it. If and when people think of music production…

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  • Using Effects to Transform the Sonic Contours of Your Electronic Drum Pad

    Using Effects to Transform the Sonic Contours of Your Electronic Drum Pad

    Musicians today use audio effects for literally everything. Guitarists, keyboardists, vocalists, saxophonists, you name it. Effects play a huge role in defining your personal sound to achieve the exact, desired impact no matter what instrument or genre you play. Yet, in my experience, drummers tend to be wariest of using effects processing in a live setting.…

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  • How to Make Your Synthesizer Fart. Yup.

    How to Make Your Synthesizer Fart. Yup.

    Synthesists are notorious for their tapestries of bleeps, bloops, burps, and farts. From those original Moog modulators to the current craze in analog, it’s been a dogged critique of synthesists — that as non-instrumentalists, all they’re good for is making fart noises on your techno tracks.  Oh, who are we kidding? We kinda do love creating…

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RJD2: From Samples to Songs