The actual wav samples can be any place on your hard drive and Logic will find them. The EXS sampler instruments files must be placed in your Sampler Instruments Folder.

1. You can find this folder by going to your Macintosh Hard Drive.

2. Next  open up the folder that say Library.

3. Next open the file that says Application Support.

4. Next the folder that says Logic

5. And finally the folder that says Sampler Instruments.

6. Drag the EXS files you downloaded to this folder.

7. When you open up the EXS instrument and browse your sounds you will now see these new EXS Sampler Instruments in there.

By the way if you haven’t already signed up for our email list make sure you do it now. You get free sounds and updates on new tutorials and tips.

When the holiday times come its always tough finding the right gift for the crazy musician in your family. Even if you are just looking for a great gift for your self these are some great deals and ideas.

Zoom H2 Portable Recorder.
This is a great portable recorder that can be used or all kinds of purpose. I have used my for recording everything from live performances to sound fx. It can also be used as a microphone and quick recording interface with any PC or Mac computer. Any producer, guitar player, drummer or other musician will thank you big time for this one,

Shure SM57 Microphone
The Shure SM57 is a world class microphone that has stood the test of time. Its rugged and  sounds great in both recording and live situations. These microphones are great for use recording guitars and drums and unlike other microphones this one can take a beating.

Shure SM58 Microphone
Just like its younger brother the Shure SM58 is one of those microphones you can never have to many of. Your loved musician can use add this to there collection to use on ther next live gig.  The shure SM57 and SM58 are the perfect combo.

The Pig Nose 7-100 Portable Amp.
This little portable amp is less then 10 inches tall and 7 inches wide. If the guitarist in you family doesn’t have one of these yet they will. Its not one a blow the windows out of the house loud amplifier.  I love it becasue it makes some decent noise but you can still whatch tv in the next room without going crazy.  These little amps are alos great for recording. Mic them up with an SM57 and your ready to go.

The Blue Mikey
The Blue Mikey is a microphone that attaches to any of the latest generations IPhones, Ipod Touches, and Ipod Nanos. It basically turns your ipod or iphone into a pretty decent portable recorder. Enough said.

Logic Studio
Logic Studio is a software program for any one using an more recent apple computer. It allows your to record, write and make music in computer. It has everything you need to go from brainstorm to final mastered CD in one box. Just supply the creatvity and your done. This is the perfect addition to any any musicians Apple computer. Just make sure its a rather new computer running the latest software. Its also about $70 cheaper through Amazon then buying directly from the Apple Store.

Protools LE and MBox Mini
Protools is a recording and music making program for any mac or pc computer. This will instantly turn any computer into a recording studio.

Finale or Sibelius
For any who loves to write and arrange music there is nothing better then writing music on a computer. Programs like Finale and Sibelius allow you to write and print music from your computer. Each program also comes with a virtual orchestra that lets you hear your music back on the computer with out having actual live musicians around. Finale or Sibelius is also a great tool for booth music students and music teachers.

Under $20

Recording Magazine
A year long subscription to Recording Magazine is a great gift under $20 that will inspire and educate your loved musician or producer all year long.

Making Music Make Money
This is a book that teaches how Music can actually make money. It explains how music publishing works and hwo you can sell your music for use in television.

Guitar Player Magazine
All the guitar news, articles and interviews and person good stand in year.

Electronic Musician Magazine
Electronic Musician is another must have magazine for any composer, keyboard player or other musician in to the recording and using computers to make music. A subscription at this price is also way cheaper then the cover price.

Korg Guitar And Bass Tuner
For under $20 your  can help your loved guitar or bsss player stay in tune. The friends of your loved musician willthank you for this one. Nothing worse then playing with any out of tune guitar player.

Distortion on recorded tracks is one of the biggest problems I find when mixing music by people learning to record. Unfortunately the only real way to fix distorted tracks is to record them over. While you are recording vocals you want to make sure you are not capturing any distortion. In the following video I’m going to explain where distortion problem usually occur and some basic ways  you can prevent them. In the tutorial I’am using Logic Studio. If you are recording with another program like Protools, Cubase or Sonar the same principles will apply. What will be different are how your the levels will look.

Please leave comments and questions below. Your feedback is important.

An Example of what a distorted vocal track looks like compared to one  that is not distorted.

The top track has distorted parts. You can see the top of a few parts have a square shape to them. The bottom track in comparison is not distorted. Each part has a rounded triangular shape to it. Using this technique is a very easy way to spot distortion if you are having trouble hearing the difference.

Find The BPM Of A Beat Using Logic Studio from drumsandsounds on Vimeo.

There are many situations when using Logic Studio where you will need to find the tempo of a beat, instrumental or sample. Using Logic’s built in tools you can find the exact bpm of a track  so that it can be locked into the grid for easy editing. With an instrumental locked to the BPM tasks like copying and pasting parts become much easier. If you are doing production this also makes it easier to add additional parts and instruments on top of a sample.  You can follow the steps below while watching the video.

Find The BPM Of A Beat In Logic Studio
 

Import the track into Logic from Itunes or another location such as your hard drives, desktop or audio CD.

Next listen to the track and follow along while you count 2 bars.  When the beat starts you will count 1  2 3 4, 1 2 3 4.

With the scissor tools make a rough cut at the beginning of beat 1 of the first bar. Make another cut roughly where the 2 bar ends.

Switch back to the Arrow tool. Double click on the the section of the beat you just cut out. This will open that section or region in the Logic’s wav editor.

This is where you will fine tune your cuts so that the to bars loop perfectly. To do this drag the anchor point on the left lower corner to the start of beat 1. Usually there will be a kick drum sound here.

Move over to the right now and adjust the where the 2nd measure ends.

Preview the loop, and listen. Adjust the start and end points as needed so the loop sounds perfect.

When the loop is a perfect 2 bars go click back in the arrange window and select a loop area of 2 bars in the timeline.

Double click on the region one more to open it up in the wav editor.

From the FUNCTIONS menu select ADJUST TEMPO BY SELECTION and LOCATORS. Once you do this Logic’s tempo will change to the tempo of the loop.

Go back to the arrange window and drag the loop to the start of a measure.

Like everything in Logic Studio there a few other ways similar results can be achieved.

Please leave all questions and comments below.

Get your beats mixed for as low as $40 per beat.

Use the Save Copy As option in the File Menu and make sure all the options to include assets are checked.

This takes everything you need and stuffs it into one nice new folder that can be zipped.

After you are done zipping the file you can use one of these free online services to send the large file to another person.

YouSendIt.com
TransferBigFiles.com

Watch the tutorial and follow the steps.

Saving A Logic Session – Method 1 from drumsandsounds on Vimeo.

28 Of the best piano and keyboard sounds from the legendary Korg Triton.
Best Of  The Triton Vol. 1 Pianos and Keys – Click to listen

The Korg Triton has been used on platinum records by every big name producer including Dr. Dre, Timberland, Jus Blaze, The Neptunes, Scott Storch, Kanye West, Swizz Beats and more. Now you can have the sounds of the Triton to use in Logic’s EXS Sampler and Native Instruments Kontakt and Soundfont format.

All multi-samples, mapped and ready for you to use in making your own beats. This sound bank is more then 1GB of samples mapped and edited. More then 700 samples were used to make this bank of sounds.

Pianos, Electric Pianos, Keys, Rhodes, Layered Pianos and more.
Putting one of the sounds of the Triton at your finger tips.

The Best Of The Triton – Piano and Keys – EXS and Kontakt format.
Instant Download 1.2 GB  $29.99

The Best Of The Triton – Piano and Key – Soundfont format.
1.2 GB Instant Download $29.99

1. Always stay in record. Once the vocalist is in front of the microphone stay in record mode as much as possible. The perfect take my come at anytime. Typically musicians and artists tend to rehearse comfortably and then freeze up when the red light goes on. Lie. Tell them your not recording , just for them to practice. You’ll get lots of great takes to use in your final vocal comp.

2. Make adjustments to the microphone and artist. Moving the microphones distance and or direction from the artist can change the sound being recorded drastically.  Don’t over look the simplicity of this. Experiment with different amounts of space between the artist’s mouth and the microphone.

3. Solve your recording problems as organically and natural as possible. Before you reach for the pre amps and compressors to boost and limit signal ask the artist to take a step back from the mic or get closer to the mic. Encourage the artist to sing louder or softer as well to help you get a good level.

4. After a take of a section has been recorded mark it. Make notes of what phrases of a tke were really good and what parts were bad. This will only take about 5 seconds per take. this will save you a huge amount of time during the editing process

5. Make sure the artist is comfortable with what they are hearing in their headphones. Check from time to time during the session to see if anything needs to be lowered or raised. Every artists is different. Some artists want to hear the beat an almost none of theme selves as they are recorded, other singers or rappers might want the beat very low and their voice very loud. Give what they want and they will perform better.

6. Don’t make the headphones to loud. Loud headphones will be picked up in the mix
later on especially as track counts add up and vocals are doubled and tripled.

7. De Bling. Take off anything that can make noise during the recording. This includes jewelry, bracelets, cell phones, ipods, ect. There is nothing worse then having to trash and great take because some ones south park ring tone went off during the recording.

8. Try a different microphone. If you have more then one microphone available take a few seconds to try it. Different models of microphones and different patters will give a different feels to a recording.

9. Take command of the session. Never be afraid to tell the artist they need to back up from the mic, sing louder, or sing softer.

10. Make Changes. As the session goes on the artists will get more comfortable and louder or more tired and softer. Keep an eye on your levels and make adjustments to your pre amp and mic positioning as needed.

11. Watch out for reflections. If your vocal sounds strange you could be recording a reflection of the sound from something else near by.  Music stands are great at creating reflections because they are usually very close to both the artists mouth and the microphone. You can get a piece of felt fabric to cover the music stand to minimize this. Other causes of reflections can be near by walls or hard surfaced floors like wood or tile.

12. Make sure you are recording to the proper side of the microphone. If you pre amp is way up and things sound strange take a peek into the booth and make sure your microphone is facing the right way. I have a piece of tape with a happy face on it on the front of my microphones to make a clear distinction between the front and the back. Before you laugh you would be surprised how many times an artist gets in the booth and starts touching the microphone and playing with things.

When recording vocals it is very important to remember that small things add up to make the difference between a great vocal recording and an awful one.  Good microphone technique also does wonders for people recording on a budget. With a $200 microphone and a decent soundcard it is possible to get extremely high quality results recording in your home.

Mixing

Mixing Secret #1 – Stop turning knobs and listening. Mixing engineers spend more time listening to the mix then they do twisting knobs, and adjusting effects. You should be spending alot more time listening. An average major label mix can take any where from 8 to 24 hours or more. Most of this time is spent listening to every small detail looking for problems and ways to solve them in a creative or corrective way. Listen on big speakers, small speakers, headphones and even in the car.

Mixing Secret #2 – Use a Template Most mixing engineers start with a template setup. Every engineer has their standard set up of effects that they begin a project with. This template is where the specific sound of that engineer begins. Each engineer falls in love with specific devices that they almost always will use. One engineer i worked with would use a sony reverb on all the vocals, another would only use the Lexicon 480L on vocals. An engineer will have the studio setup by the assistant with the same gear on the same channels, or bring their own personal equipment that they use on every song. As you learn to mix being building your set up of go to plugins and devices. Its better to know 5 plugins in and out then use 20 plugins and have no idea what they are doing. Find things you like the sound of and stick with it.

Mixing Secret #3 – It’s to loud in here. The best engineers spend most of the time mixing at very low volumes. At lower volumes you can hear much more defined. You will hear frequencies better and smaller differences in volume easier. Try listening at lower volumes.  Other benefits to this are less fatigue on you ears and the most important one no damage to your hearing.

Mixing Secret #4 – The sound of silence. When you work on a mix, don’t start with the music. Start with the noise. The first time i sat in on a big analog mix I watched the board light up like a Christmas tree. The lights were the mute buttons for each channel going on and off during the mix. If a track did not have music playing it was muted. But why mute the channel when there is nothing playing? Well just because you don’t hear noise coming from a channel doesn’t mean it isn’t there. If you played that one empty channel of audio you wouldn’t hear anything, but when ten, 20 or even 50 channels start adding up you will hear stuff filling up frequencies of your mix. This is especially important when you are mixing session with lots of live instruments and room noise. Although this is a technique from the analog world you can still apply it in the digital domain by deleting what you don’t need and putting a small fade on the starts and ends of your region. More on this in another post.

Mixing Secret #5 – The switcharoo If an engineer working on a mix doesn’t like a sound… They get rid of it. If a sound is causing a conflict with another element in the mix that can not be fixed and engineer will typically do one of two things. First they might re record the part or replace the sound. If for example a snare was recorded poorly a new one will be put into its place or blended with it. If a part or a sound couldn’t be replaced or layered to sound better it might be removed from that part of the arrangement. The producer, a&r, and artist can fight it out later. Ultimately the best decisions need to be made for sonic clarity not emotional ties to the song. Next week will continue with why your mix sucks Part III. Take a moment to sign up to our email list for more tips and free drum sounds to use in your productions and beat making. Read last weeks post for more information about the mixing process.
If you need your music or beats mixed by a pro audio and recording engineer contact us.

The questions I get asked the most always have to do with mixing. Why does my mix suck? What am I doing wrong? In the next few blog post I am going to talk about why your mix sucks and what you can do to fix it. First and introduction to the mixing process.

If you are new to making beats, producing or recording eventually you are going to have to do a mix of your music. What is mixing? Mixing is when you take all the different tracks of audio and or midi and combine them together into some sort of file that normal people can hear on there stereo, ipod or computer. Usually this would be a stereo wav, aiff, or mp3 file. The wav and aiff file can then be burned on to a CD. The mp3 file can emailed, posted on your myspace page or website, and uploaded to your ipod or other mp3 player.  Mixing is the final place for you to make changes to your music and fix problems.

What about mastering you ask?  Mastering is for the people who do mastering. The point of mastering is to take a collection of music, put it together and make it sound consistent, and press it on a CD. There are certain things that can be fixed and or enhanced during the mastering phase of a project but these things should be done for the sake of consistency.  Just to be clear… If you think there is something that needs to be changed, or fixed in your music the last chance you have to do is during the mixing process.  That is why it is so important.

Now that you have a basic understanding of what mixing is and why it so important lets move on to the hard part. Why your mix sucks?

Reason #1 “We’ll fix it in the mix”
If you have to fix it in the mix that usually means it the music shouldn’t have made it to the mixing stage. The truth hurts some times but if your thinking about doing music professionally at some point you’re going to have to come to grips with this. Now before you get discouraged continue reading…. This doesn’t mean that your an awful musician, you have no talent or you don’t know how to make beats. What it does mean that you have to make better musical decisions. If your an artist it means you have to allow our self more time to prepare for a recording and more time to record. The mixing process starts at the same time making music does. The better the music sounds from the start the easier the mixing process gets. I can not stress this enough.

Tips for Better Mixing  Part I – Production Secrets.

1. Practice makes perfect. If your a singer or rapper recording a verse, you should not be reading your lines in the recording booth. Rehearse them to the point of memory, keep the lyric sheet around as a guide.  Know in advance what parts of the song you might want to double or triple, where you might want to add harmonies. Be Prepared.

2. Record more than one take. Even if you feel that the one take you recorded was the best it could possibly be performed, Record Another one. Parts of a take can be edited together. This is called comping. Usually when an artist continues recording they also get more comfortable in front of the microphone. All these things add to a better performance.

3. Listen to what you are actually recording. This one goes for producers and artists. When you are done recording a take, Stop and play it back. If it is great, move on. If not listen for where you need to make corrections and see what you can do better. If it doesn’t sounds good now its not going to sound good later. No really.

4. Spend more time choosing your sounds. This tip is more for the producers and beat makers. Try different sounds while you are making beats. The right kick and snare or combination of kicks and snares can really bring a drum track to life. If the drums in your beats are hitting hard then maybe you need to use better drum samples. Its possible also that the drums sounds your using clash with other sounds in the track. Bottom line is take time to decide, listen, try different sounds and see what works best.

5. Change Keys. When your making beats or even singing a song the over all key your recording your music in will have an effect on how the music sounds. James Brown recorded most of his music in the same key.  It wasn’t because the musicians could only play in one key. It was because the instruments sounded good in this key.  If sounds seem to clash then try the melody in a different place on the keyboard or read tip 4 over again.

6. Use Layering. To make a beat or song that will sound fuller layer your sounds and vocals. A simple beat might only have 1 musical idea or melody but by layering different sounds together it will sound much fuller then one instrument by itself. You can use this sample principle when recording vocal parts and with your drum tracks. Its important to use your ear as the ultimate production tool at this point. There is a big difference between layering, and over doing it. Do not just stack things together with no reason. Do it because you like the end result.

Next week we will continue with Why Your Mix Sucks Part II. Until then if you have any questions please leave them in the comments section below and subscribe to our email list for free sounds, and production and recording tips.