Mixing is a vital part of music production. In professional studios, mixing is done in an acoustically treated room using high-end studio monitor speakers. However, in most home studios this sort of setup is not available, and we often need to mix our songs using headphones. Mixing on headphones is similar to mixing on monitors,…
When you’re working on a song, there is often a need to output the tracks or stems. This could be to give to someone else for mixing, to make a backing track or to make a remix of your song. Fortunately if you use Reaper, it’s easy to export stems. To export stems or tracks…
Reaper is a great DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), suitable for beginners and experienced music producers alike. But to get the best out of it, it needs to be configured correctly. In particular, the audio device settings can make a huge difference in performance and sound quality. For excellent performance with Reaper’s audio device settings on…
So you’ve been working on a song in Reaper for a while, and you are very pleased with the results. When it’s finished, you’ll want to give it to other people to listen to. Fortunately, you can export to the extremely popular mp3 format from within Reaper. To export to mp3 in Reaper, select File->Render….
Traditionally, electric guitars are associated with being loud. Plug one into a big tube amp, crank up the volume and let rip! But there are many reasons why you might want to play through headphones; keeping the noise to a minimum – neighbors, not wanting to wake the children, playing late at night, etc. So…
The most common way to connect a musical keyboard (synth, digital piano, workstation, etc.) to a computer is to use MIDI, something that I do in my home studio all the time. But supposing your keyboard does not have MIDI capability, or you want to connect it to your computer in some other way. How…
The Focusrite Scarlett series of audio interfaces is one of the most popular on the market. But with six different models, how do you know which one to choose? To record one audio track at a time, or a microphone and an instrument together, the Focusrite Solo is ideal. For MIDI capability, the 4i4, 8i6,…
Maybe you have been recently thinking about starting to use your computer for some music-related activities. You’ve heard about these “audio interface” things that musicians use with their PCs. For what you are planning to do, how do you know if you will need an audio interface? An audio interface is required to record external…
So you have a vocal microphone. How do you hear it? Sure, you can record it by plugging it into your audio interface and computer. But suppose you just want to listen to it. You have a guitar amplifier that enables you to listen to your electric guitar amplified. Could you do the same with…
All home studios need an audio editor, and Audacity is a great option available completely free. Sure, it has its quirks but it is widely used with lots of help and tutorials available for it online. I have used Audacity for many years. But you know how it goes sometimes; you have an important audio…
