SITRAL W295 EQ: active inductor design, stepped controls, and why happy accidents matter.

Jessie Mazin’s collaborative TikTok songs, The Go-Go’s “Our Lips Are Sealed,” and what they reveal about making music today.

Sound Techniques A-Range consoles at Sunset Sound, Chamber One plugin, the insanity of NAMM plus some mystery bed-peeing.

Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams deconstructed: vocal mic bleed, arrangement ideas: adding by twos, and mixing with Boulevard Recording’s legendary Sound Techniques console.

The unexpected benefits of doing something consistently for years, and an invitation to take on something long and repetitive for yourself.

Lip sync controversies and high art with Lypsinka, Disney voice acting and Til Tuesday’s ‘Voices Carry’.

An introduction to Sunset Sound’s iconic reverb chamber, and a brief explanation of how reverb chambers function. Some remixing of The Cure’s Just Like Heaven. We have a new plug-in coming out in a few weeks.

The Sound Techniques console was the heart of Sunset Sound from 1967 til 1974. It’s also part of our new reverb plug-in.

Impulse response capture, convolution, and hybrid reverb through the lens of Sunset Sound and Elektra Studios… and The Doors!

A glimpse at the future of the music biz, perhaps post-streaming? A listen to retro-rock band Velvet Daydream, and some psychedelic nuggets.

Some ideas to add to your library, some attitude regarding creation from Ty Segall. Get your butt in the studio. From Korneff Audio. Because we care about your grey matter.

Raye’s new one is an epic, but maybe too tweezed for the good of mankind. The guys from Her’s.

Down a strange twisted path of hair metal covers, old drum machines, demos that were released as records, and more.

A playlist about taxes, and Cheap Trick killing it.

Looking at loudness as density, and how the Puff Puff mixPass makes things louder.

Usage ideas on the Puff Puff mixPass, and when to use it instead of compression and EQ.

Godlike slide guitar, ungodly music, the 10 commandments and don’t get addicted to the SOLO button.

High-pass filter issues, Ultravox meets Krautrock, Ai is a pain in the head.

A look at the phase issues caused by high-pass filters, and how to use them correctly so you don’t destroy your mix.

Grand Funk’s Bad Time tracked at The Swamp with Shelly Yakus: fuzzy bass, aluminum Valeno guitars, Mark Farner’s killer vocals, and Don Brewer’s signature hihat choke fills.

How 10cc built I’m Not in Love from 624 vocal loops on 16-track tape. Three weeks of insanity at Strawberry Studios with a Helios console and crazy commitment.

Dave Pensado’s mixing wisdom and the physics of analog tape: how magnetic particles compress transients, add harmonic distortion, and why tape sucks the life from highs.

Chocolate Milk Gooderizer: multiband saturation with MOO, SQUISH, and FROTH using Baxandall EQ curves. Louis Cole’s genius with Metropole Orkest and crazy house recordings.

Understanding capacitors and inductors is essential to understanding how equalizers work. This article explains the essence of these components using clear language.

Kolektivo’s warm Bossa Nova vibes, Ramón Stagnaro’s classical guitar chops with Yanni, Dan Korneff demoing Chocolate Milk, and learning capacitors and inductors for EQ circuits.

A simple, clear explanation of Voltage and Current, showing how they guide the flow of sound through a circuit, broken down in easy language to help you understand audio electronics.

Gordon Lightfoot nailing Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald in one take at Eastern Sound, plus microtonal mathrock madness from Quebec’s Angine de Poitrine with loop pedals and dick noses.

A clear look at how electrical energy travels through audio circuits, using relatable examples to reveal how sound is shaped, controlled, and brought to life in electronics.

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs: heavy metal psychedelia recorded at Blank Studios with Sam Grant. API console, homemade plate reverb, aluminum guitars, and grooves that swing.

Inductors store energy in a magnetic field, and function as high-pass filters. More on the mysteries.

Thoughts on where the music industry is at when it comes to the proliferation of Ai.

Listening for mono vs stereo: Saint Motel’s spatial drama, Mott the Hoople’s phone trick on Trident console, Ecca Vandal’s wall-of-sound, and The Replacements’ jaunty Let It Be.

The way a plug-in is constructed has a huge impact on its sound quality. You’ll find out why in this post.

Guadalupe Plata, slapback delay, lo-fi drums, and chasing gritty vintage saturation.

We’ve been talking about passive EQs, now let’s talk about active EQs.

The Clash’s London Calling, Guy Stevens’ chaotic genius, Cadac consoles at Wessex, and why great records still make us want to get back in the studio.

“Christmas Wrapping” at Electric Lady, Vince Guaraldi’s spare “Linus and Lucy,” and the quiet melancholy that makes great holiday records last.

Rosalia’s operatic ‘Lux’ with killer reverb tricks, Boney M’s ‘Rasputin’ and those smooth SiTRAL-sounding mids, and The Beatles’ casual brilliance on ‘Dear Prudence’ with Paul on drums.

Brooklyn’s Geese with shitty drum sounds and untuned vocals, plus Jimi Hendrix knocking out ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ in 20 minutes at De Lane Lea on four tracks. No fuss, all genius.

RL Burnside’s country blues gets Tom Rothrock’s shoegaze dub treatment, YouTube fighting AI with new policies, and connecting timbre to harmonic distortion on your mix bus.

A collection of ideas and tips on tracking guitars.

Ozzy’s softy side with My Little Man, Chuck Mangione inventing smooth jazz, and Golden Earring’s George Kooymans—1975’s most underrated guitar god with fusion chops.

Deerhunter’s Helicopter built on Eventide PitchFactor: Bradford Cox’s genius production with mono drums, spring reverb bashing, pitch-shifted guitars, and saturated fadeout madness.

Mix at 75dB SPL sweet spot but check at whisper levels. Turn volume to zero, creep up slowly—what comes first reveals your mix balance. Sibilance hurts at low volumes.

Nonstandard Mixing Advice #1

Stop chasing reference mixes. Use context not comparison, take notes with pen and paper, listen at low volumes, and channel your inner Andrew Sheps for better mixing.

Elvis Costello’s Accidents Will Happen at Eden Studios: cheap Beyer mic, Pete Thomas drums, Steve Nieve’s keyboard stacking, and Robbie Robertson’s haunting Flower Moon score.

Using saturation to enhance low-frequency sounds on a small speaker.

Ludwig Göransson’s bluegrass horror soundtrack for Sinners, Echo’s Lips Like Sugar production tricks, bass presence on small speakers, and Sting vs The Police royalty drama.

Using The WOW Thing to get huge, Randy Staub style guitar sounds. Think Black Album. Think Nickelback. Think WOW. Complete breakdown, including settings.

Too many different reverbs can overwhelm your mixes. Just use three. This is how you do it, and how to think about it.

Lips Like Sugar was a hit for Echo and the Bunnymen. It’s a great production full of texture and color. We break it down for you. Read it hear.

DJ Cummerbund’s killer mashups, Rick Beato vs Universal copyright strikes, The Turtles’ saturated production on She’s My Girl, and three-reverb mixing philosophy.

ADHD nomads making Moroccan blues with Bab L’Bluz, vaporwave necromancer Jim Miles, heavy guitar tricks with WOW Thing plugin, and mysterious clicking at Western Recorders.

Sticking a saturator on the mix bus isn’t going to get you that vintage analog warmth. Setting up your DAW like an old console will.

America’s Sister Golden Hair at Record Plant Sausalito with George Martin: delay vs doubling tricks, lap steel panning, and Sonny Curtis writing I Fought the Law and MTM theme.

Captain and Tennille’s Love Will Keep Us Together at Paramount: Hal Blaine drums, prepared piano, dense keyboard arrangements, Neil Sedaka’s weird 10cc version, Joy Division.

Distorted drum sounds don’t require a strange little room and a bunch of old mics and compressors. Here’s a way to get dangerous dirty drums with a single plug-in—our Shure Level-Loc.

Ace’s How Long tracked at Rockfield Studios on MCI console: stolen Pentangle bassline, AKG D12 kick with that boing, plate reverb on drums, and ugly Uni-Vibe guitar solo.

Blur This is a Low: Damon Albarn wrote lyrics from weather map handkerchief after hernia surgery. Meaning is what we bring–AI can make wedding songs but cannot leap from weather report to art.

Peter Frampton, a perfect performance, and why the magic of making music still hits so hard.

A deep listen into Severance: Theodore Shapiro’s minimalist score, Les McCann’s soul jazz, and how music and sound design drive mood, motion, and meaning.

AIR Moon Safari was tracked on 8-track with a Fostex D80, cheap Hofner bass through a guitar amp, old Moog and Korg synths, and a Big Muff on the Rhodes solo.

How inspiration and technique work together in songwriting. Phone poles of ideas strung with technical wire. Plus Bowie daughter releases her debut album Xandri.

Happy accidents like Reese’s cups: Beatles’ radio on I Am the Walrus, Tommy James playing tape backward created Mirage, Luke Law says do the stupid thing anyway. Work physically.

Productive limitations spark creativity: Glyn Johns’ three-mic drums from limited inputs, The Edge’s delay fixing weak chops, 1176 bugs as features, Nebraska on four-track cassette.

Cleverly stealing songwriting ideas: flipping chords, blackout poetry, writing bridges like The Monkees, and production tricks from Bowie and Brian Eno. Fix what beats you like Dennis Connor.

Pick creative partners carefully: balance perfection with push-overs, accept bad ideas until good ones flow, lock down money splits like U2, and bad ideas fall out of orbit.

AI existential crisis: will creativity prove to be just intelligence? AI data centers use enough energy for 100,000 homes. Try not to fall in love with your AI–you will hurt, it will not.

Beatles Revolver gave permission to screw up, Matisse painted over mistakes, Bowie’s Starman pointed at you—art is permission. You don’t need permission. Put stuff out.

Dave Shapiro and Daniel Williams, Magpie Pirates creative Discord community, permission to risk not permission to suck, and Jackie Venson’s loop guitar genius.

The Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle at Abbey Road with Geoff Emerick: four-track genius on £1000 budget, misspelled title, fake touring Zombies featuring Billy Gibbons, Time of Season hit.

NS10s’ time domain secrets, Haute and Freddy’s New Order meets Renaissance fair synth-pop, Love’s protopunk 7 and 7 Is chaos, and Talking Heads 77 remaster clarity.

Sly Stone and Brian Wilson tributes: curated playlists with Sly’s Flickinger console funk, Maestro Rhythm King drum machines, Brian’s home studio symphonies, and Stephen Desper’s innovations.

ChatGPT vs Claude AI as studio interns: one won’t shut up, the other forgets everything. Holly Hearndon’s AI experiments, Via Mardot’s theremin sci-fi soundtracks, and AI threatening humanity.

Mick Ralphs’ Ready For Love with Mott the Hoople beats Bad Company’s version, AI band Velvet Sundown’s listenable mediocrity, and Jesse Welles’ Woody Guthrie meets Nirvana garage fury.

Pawn Shop Comp deep dive: tube preamp saturation with switchable tubes, transformer overdrive on bass, FET compression from gentle to 100:1, and attack as poke vs release as hang.

Fishmans’ dreamy 35-minute Long Season, then deep into tape physics: magnetic flux, particle inertia clipping transients, VU meter lies, and Echoleffe homework on snare compression.

Timbre and Harmonic Distortion are fruit from the same tree. And then clipping and compression: a look at the differences. And a nifty homework assignment.

Producer Shel Talmy cut You Really Got Me with slashed speaker and Jimmy Page on rhythm. Mic placement tricks: proximity effect for bass, off-axis for highs, 3:1 rule.

Kim Deal Nobody Loves You More at 63: learned Pro-Tools from Steve Albini, recorded the last thing he ever tracked. No autotune, no algorithm, just being herself.

Korneff plugin secrets: Pawn Shop has cassette duplicator circuit. Talkback Limiter made Hugh Padgham gated drums. Echoleffe has three delay lines with individual EQs and bias.

El Juan waveshaper adds controlled harmonics like different consoles. Puff Puff makes things perceptually louder. WOW Thing invents bass. Plugin secrets and weird tricks.

Reverb in the real world is sound bouncing off surfaces, millions of little chunks of reflected sound turning into a cloudy mass. But in the studio, who cares what reverb is. In the studio, it’s about what it can do.

Charlie Perry’s debut album Cinema 3000 as Common Saints, blending psychedelic soul, lush production, slide guitar, and inventive reverb techniques for an immersive listening experience.

Deep Purple Highway Star from Made in Japan: tracked live with 8-track to Marshall PA console. Perfect driving song. Plus the truth about nominal levels and gain staging.

Having issues setting levels on your DAW or when you use plug-ins? Things sounding too crunchy? Here’s a simple, clear explanation of what you can do to solve this problem in your studio.

Setting audio levels on plugins explained. National Sweetheart psychedelic instrumentals. Frank Sinatra Christmas Album cut live with full orchestra at Capitol in four days.

Super producer Richard Perry did Carly Simon, Harry Nilsson, Ringo with all three Beatles. Plus Fanny—the all-girl rock band that threw down like The Faces in 1970.

Rolling Stones Time Waits for No One—a liminal album, lost between eras. How song transitions work: gates between sections, bridges that change the song’s mind.

Phantom Planet California mixed by Tchad Blake and Jack Joseph Puig—two masters, same tracks. Plus Joni Mitchell Blue and Delta Spirit heartbreaker amid California fires.

Shure builds military-grade everything since the 1940s. Robots bend cables a million times, mics survive bulldozers and fires. Capitalism done right with heart and community.

NAMM 2025 stories: Tchad Blake set up the booth, critical distance lost a car in the garage, Rick Beato liked the sweater. Behind the scenes at Korneff Plug Inn.

Peter Gabriel i/o won two Grammys with Bright-Side and Dark-Side mixes. Stevie Wonder Living for the City: one man, TONTO synth, Moog bass, tape speed vocal tricks.

Dave Jerden engineered Talking Heads Remain in Light and produced Alice In Chains Dirt—the sound of the early 90s: punchy, huge, clear with dynamics, no loudness wars.

Hate headphones? I cover every technique I know, including cutting a reversed-phase leakage track. If you hate headphones like I hate headphones, you’ll love this technique.

Chris Isaak Wicked Game was sampled and stitched on AKAI DD1000. Vocals cut live with no headphones, drum leakage shifting phase, Nashville-tuned guitar magic.

What does glue mean on a mix bus compressor? Rhythmic pumping plus unified harmonic distortion. Also: AI disruption and LP Lost On You—a song AI cannot write.

Meters, myths, and music: the Pro Tools controversy, recording philosophy, and lessons from Roberta Flack’s First Take.

Bowie Space Oddity: Gus Dudgeon loved it, Visconti thought it was novelty. Herbie Flowers fluid bass, Terry Cox jazz drums, Mick Wayne detuned guitar accident magic.