SynchroArts have a reputation across the industry for creating the best vocal alignment tools - many people have depended on VocAlign for years and more recently Revoice Pro 2 is like VocAlign on steroids. At Messe it featured as part of the Alicia Keys remix session on the Pro Tools 11 demo.

Now Synchroarts have given us a copy of the software for one lucky winner.

Simply complete the form below - you will need to visit their new community site to find the answer to the question ‘When Did Billy Jay Stein First Use VocAlign?’.

It is available in all plug-in formats including AAX and we understand they are currently working on a PC version.

Russ catches up with producer Fab Dupont and talks about his philosophies of music making.

Fab has received three Grammy Award nominations for his work with Toots & the Maytals, and Kirk Whalum. Fab is owner of Flux Studios in New York City as well as co-owner of Puremix.net.

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Red light fever is that condition that seems to grip even the most seasoned performer. They can knock a song, guitar part or even interview out of the park without even thinking, then the minute you hit record they go to pieces. Here are my top 5 tips for helping to beat the fever.

1. Help Them Relax
   The aim of a good record Producer or Video director is to harness the natural talent of the person they are trying to capture. The first cause for red light fever can often be traced back to a Producer or Director ramping up the tension. I know we all have a lot of work to do in a finite amount of time, but often a time set aside at the start of each day just to chat things through and talk about expectations can save hours later on.
2. Don’t Tell Them You’re Recording
   You’ve seen me say this before, but if you have a red light in your studio disconnect it, or a camera with a red light to show record, cover it up. In my experience some of my best takes were the ‘rehearsals and sound checks. Which leads me to my next one…
3. Record Everything
   Leave your DAW in record, your camera rolling and you’ll often capture the happy accident in a moment you least expected. It takes time to go through the stuff afterwards to review, but you’ll be surprised what you find on the cutting room floor.
4. Be Prepared And Make Sure Your Artist Is Too
   If you have to keep retaking because the bass player keeps forgetting the chords to the middle eight, or the vocalist is reading the words that will just ramp up the tension for everyone involved. That goes for the Producer or Director too, the army are right ‘prior preparation prevents piss poor performance’ - make sure you know exactly what you are doing before starting Production, which leads me to the final and most important tip…
5. Stay Out Of The Way
   I recently shot what was for everyone involved a complex project with a band. I sat down with them after the shoot and they paid the biggest compliment possible ‘we forgot your team were even there’ was their response to our presence. As Producers and Directors our job is to capture great performances from great performers, this is often achieved by staying out of the way, letting them be themselves and simply doing our job of making sure we get it.

So, there are 5 tips, are there any you would like to add?

Mastering Engineer, Founder of “Dynamic Range Day” and Owner of the productionadvice website,
Ian Shepherd takes a really interesting look at “the sound” of the Sound City Movie and its accompanying album soundtrack and questions what happened to its dynamic range.

Tell us what you think. 

Russ shows a few tricks for helping to take a simple clap sound and make it sound huge.

Mixing, mixing, mixing, we all want to get better mixes - it seems no one is entirely satisfied with their mixes. As it’s often said, most mixes are not finished, simply abandoned. However there are ways to get to your desired result faster.

Here are our top 5 tips to faster mixes…

1. Decide What Kind Of Mix You Want
   Too many people start pushing up faders and adding plug-ins hoping to discover a great mix. Why not try listening through to the song and deciding what kind of shape and dynamics you want the song to have. Once you have a plan, then the mix will be far easier to achieve - those who fail to plan, plan to fail.
2. Delete Some Tracks
   I was with hanging out with uber engineer/producer Vance Powell last week and we both agreed that one of the first things we do is start going through the tracks and muting the tracks that add nothing. Does it really need 18 guitars, or 8 tracks of percussion loops? Be brutal, it can get you fired if you are working for a client, but who wants to put their name to a mess?
3. Move Your Unused Plug-ins
   If you are one of those people who has only the plug-ins they need, then you’re unique. Most of us have far too many plug-ins cluttering up our DAW. Take half an hour to move the ones you don’t use often, or have never used and put them in your unused plug-ins folder - my guess is that it’s between 50-80% of them. They slow up load times, sessions and distract you when you are mixing.
4. Delete Plug-ins
   I got sent a mix last week, it was 28 tracks and every track had around 3 plug-ins on it. The first thing I do when I get tracks to mix is disable every plug-in. On this occasion the track sounded a hell of a lot better without them, in fact it sounded great. I added an instance of UAD ATR102 and iZotope Ozone to the master bus and bounced it. Sometimes less is more.
5. Take A Lot Of Breaks
   That seems like a contradiction, take breaks to work faster? Yes, take a least 10 minutes off an hour, get a coffee, some fresh air and come back to the mix with a new set of ears. You’ll be amazed how much difference regular breaks will make to your productivity.

So, there’s 5 from us, what are yours?

It seems the “Mobile Audio App world” is dominated by iOS devices from Apple and the vast majority of Pro Audio software and hardware developers have stuck to this platform and are unwilling to spread their wings into Android and Windows Phone territory……Until Now…..

IK Multimedia have recently announced their move into the Android world which is a very welcome sight to those not interested in entering the Apple lifestyle.

Their first App the  iRig Recorder is pitched as a “Field Recorder App” with fairly straightforward functionality but none the less will pave the way for their other products in the future.

Full Details of the Android App incliding Pricing here

Also IK’s range of mobile hardware accessories is now compliant with Android devices,

Heres More from IK Multimedias Press release:

Click to read more ...

We really do appreciate the support from the Pro Tools community around the world, but we’re just part of a growing network of really great sites that help those in the recording community.

Here are our top 5 sites, read by many of us every day.

• Recording Revolution
  Run by our buddy Graham Cochrane, full of tips tricks and insights.
• Pensado’s Place
  Run by top producer and all round nice guy Dave Pensado, great TV show on YouTube.
• Audiogeekzine
  Run by another buddy Jon Tidy, who also co-hosts The Home Recording Show.
• Protools Professional
  One for the post community, Brent is ex Avid and has a great site for the Pro Tools post users.
• Home Studio Corner
  Run by another really nice guy Joe Gilder, check our this site for more tips and tricks.

We are sure there are many more, but these five stand out for us in offering consistently good content for the recording community.

Over the last 2 months I have been working on and off on a Radio 3 drama for ‘The Wire’ slot and it has been a really challenging project to work on. The Pythagorean Comma hinges on the fact that the two different names we give for the black note on the piano in between the two white notes, D and E (“Ray” and Mi” in tonic Sol-Fa)- have two names – either D sharp or E flat. However, acoustically, and away from the piano (in the voice, or on a stringed instrument) these are not quite the same. The piano, with its so-called Equal Temperament, is in reality an out-of-tune compromise! and this difference gives the play its name.

Loosely based on Jules Verne’s story “Mr Ray Sharp and Miss Me Flat”, “The Pythagorean Comma” is a music drama with text by Blake Morrison and music by Gavin Bryars. Verne’s story takes place in a 19th century Swiss village. This contemporary version is set on a remote fictional Scottish island but the essential story is unchanged. A village organist gets old and deaf and stops playing and the organ falls silent.

Click to read more ...

Quietart Makers of the “Wave Rider” Automatic automation plugin have made a cool little iphone app that helps You determine Audio Visual SYNC Errors in video playback.

Catchin’ SYNC allows you to capture and manually determine audio SYNC issues on your video playback device.
In almost all cases, where audio and video playback passes through separate devices (i.e Audio through receiver, video through LCD TV or Projector etc.) there will be advancement or delay on the audio signal, making the viewing experience unpleasant. Catchin’ SYNC will help you determine if your system is in SYNC or not and by how much in milliseconds or frames. With that information you can add appropriate amounts of delay to your signal and get everything play along properly in SYNC.

Check it out !

Russ gets another request to use just the FREE stuff in Pro Tools to get some of the sounds from a top hit. This time he’s figuring out some of the cool sounds on the Pink track ‘Try’.

Get tips for capturing and mixing ADR. Join the team for an in-depth free webinar on how Pro Tools makes creating an indie film soundtrack easy, from beginning to end.

As part of a series on creating indie film soundtracks, host and sound supervisor Tom Graham of Avid on Dec 18th at either 1pm or 5pm EST with special guests re-recording/ADR mixer Scott Weber (Person of Interest, LOST), Foley mixer Geordy Sincavage (Person of Interest, Welcome to the Rileys), composer Sean Halley, and director Brian Barnhart (The Ballad of Angel Face, Hollywood Gothic) will take an in-depth look at how to create a professional soundtrack on an indie budget.

• Tips for capturing and mixing production sound, dialog, music, Foley, and ADR
• Time-saving benefits of using a Pro Tools end-to-end workflow
• How to work with Foley and ADR to best match the picture
• Scoring tips for composing in Pro Tools using real and virtual instruments
• The fastest ways to deliver temp and final surround and stereo mixes
• Plus, get your questions answered by the team 

Sign up then watch the movie - Agent MX-Z3RO in HD on YouTube before the webcast. You will also be able to download the session too once you have signed up.

We have had some requests from users wishing to download the entire songwriting series to watch where they like as often as they like.

So we've dropped them into a folder and zipped it up as a 1.7gb series of Quicktime movies, over 2 hours all for £10.00

You can buy it here

It may not be 'Lost' or 'Ashes to Ashes' but this has seemed like a never ending epic of blog videos.

You can buy the entire series as a download here as 11 Quicktime movies to play on any machine as often as you like for just £10. Click here to buy

The gang over at M-Audio have created a handy guide to help guide you through the world of cables and connectors.

'Overdub - Vol 2 All About Audio Interfaces' is a very cool and well written FREE PDF that should be a welcome addition to both newcomers and old hacks to the world of recording.

Grab you copy here

In this series Russ lays himself bare and shows how a song is put together from scratch, including mistakes, how to fix them and how to take a song all the way to mix.

In this series Russ lays himself bare and shows how a song is put together from scratch, including mistakes, how to fix them and how to take a song all the way to mix.

In this session - tracking the vocals

• Watch it here
• iPhone/iPad users watch it here