Tips and tricks for recording acoustic guitar, including setting up mics, using a direct input, eq and compression. Part 1 is about recording strumming guitar.

Following the 3 month decline in Avid shares hitting an all time low last week, they have now leapt by over 11% to in the last few days.

This will be welcome news for Avid, who have needed some good news for some time. With defections from Pro Tools to other platforms happening at a rate of knots, this may not stem the tide at grass roots level, but at least the next Board Meeting may not be as depressing.

Media Composer 5 is a leap forward for video editors, it is being well received and may stem the tide of moves to Final Cut Pro. However, what readers of this blog will be asking is when will we see the same kind of changes needed to get Pro Tools back in the game?

You may or may not know but if you don't want to spend hours downloading every free patch from the blog then there's always been a handy way to get them in one single download. We've always offered the option to download the first 100 of the series (that's 350 patches) for £10. Now we've released the next 100 of the series. If you find that helpful then click below to get them now.

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Quirky, original, loved by many as the first sampler, the Mellotron is like nothing else.

Here is the third in the new series of sounds, a flute.

• MP3 Demo
• Download here

Long time Pro Tools die hard and the man who has shown thousands of people around the world how to harness the power of Pro Tools, Kenny Gioia, has recently released the brilliant REAPER explained series with Groove 3.

Kenny says 'This isn't a sales pitch. I really believe that Reaper is hands down the best composing and editing DAW out there. It's just different enough from the others, that a lot of people try it and just go back to their previous DAW. The learning curve is surprisingly steep for such a simple program. But the beauty of it is that once you get past that initial step, you're golden. It's fast. Simple. And you're hooked. I know I am. Editing in any other DAW (not mentioning names) is brutal for me now.'

Check out the videos here and try a copy of REAPER here.

Russ shows how some simple editing, time correction and eq can transform your electric guitar tracks.

You know how much we love the M-Audio Axiom keyboard range. Well the beloved range has recently got a face-lift and don't they look sexy?

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Cool email from community member Mike Rank about how to be tax efficient when investing on your creativity.

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I'm having a fantastic time playing with the IK Multimedia Amplitube iRig, on the whole it sounds great and is easy to use.

However I've uncovered something which I'm not sure is intentional or a design flaw, if nothing else, the user manual doesn't go far enough to explain things.

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Quirky, original, loved by many as the first sampler, the Mellotron is like nothing else.

Here is the second in the new series of sounds, Church Choir.

• MP3 Demo
• Download here

Updated on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 at 7:12AM by Russ Hughes

For those who take an interest in such things then you may have seen the Avid stock report on the right hand sidebar of the blog. Since we featured it, it's beens sliding down and down (if it were a Ski slope, you certainly wouldn't think about taking a run down it!) even with some big announcements such as the new version of Avid video editing software (which our editors in the office love) nothing seems to be able to halt the decline in Avid Stock.

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Quirky, original, loved by many as the first sampler, the Mellotron is like nothing else.

Here is the first in the new series of sounds, Orchestra Brass.

• MP3 Demo
• Download here

Perhaps it's my age but I'm feeling a little Déjà vu having just invested in the cool Amplitube iRig guitar effects app and hardware for the iPhone.

You see in 1982 way before the idea of a mobile phone, and iPod or an iPhone there appeared the Tom Scholz Rockman. Based on the then killer audio product the Sony Walkman, the Rockman gave you a guitar rig in your pocket.

Now over 25 years later the iRig brings it all again. A little more hi tech perhaps, but for me it reminded me of playing the Rockman in 1982, I was then 16!

• Check out the Rockman here
• Check out the iRig here

I'll be running a tutorial soon to show you how to re-amp through the iRig!

Perhaps you've not had the experience of someone hating your song, but being of an artistic temperament has its downsides, one being finding it hard to take criticism, however well meant, especially when it's about one of your songs.

There are not many people who will trash your creation without any thought for your feelings, but at the same time there are also some who will tell you something is wonderful just so you won't get hurt. I learnt a long time ago that my Mum is not the best person to have a song evaluated by, I could kill a goat with a sledgehammer, whilst singing in Norwegian and she would love it! 

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Just got a nice bit of feedback from community member Mike Query about the song-writing series.

'This was awesome, thanks so much Russ. Helped in so many ways. We were able to put together an album for charity recently, and I gotta say if it weren't for you (and a gentleman I believe you know) we wouldn't have been able to finish it in time. Well, for me anyways, since he knew what he was doing and I didn't.

Check out some of the clips at http://www.twocentsworthcd.org (tracks 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9 were tracked and rough mixed in my room, Jeff took over from there).'

We are thrilled that the blog can be of help on these kind of projects, so take a moment to head over and take a listen to the excellent tracks done by Mike, Jeff and the team and if you can support them. Often charity records can be a euphemism for 'rubbish', not on this occasion.

More here

If you look to the right of this story you will see a new section called 'Amazing Deals' giving you some incredible prices on plug-ins. It's a feed from our new bargain basement page and gives you the chance of getting the silly priced, limited quantity deals before they are gone.

We tried using email, but a couple of users felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of emails, so we hope this strikes the balance of informing those looking for bargains without stressing those who don't need one right now! If you want to know what the buyers think then read this...

A request from a user 'how do you make a DI bass sit well in a song' Russ shows how the tools supplied with Pro Tools 8 can be used to give bass punch and sit well into a mix. He even throws a dose of Eleven FREE on the bass!

An inspection of the Mac installer for 8.04 reveals updaters for Strike, Velvet and Hybrid as well as the Creative Collection. We'll check with AIR to find out what those fixes are and report back as soon as we have news.

The news from the AIR Team is that the fixes included in the latest version of 8.04 are those that have already been released in various forms over recent upgrades, they include:

• IE8 fix for Windows
• Structure EXS import fix