How to prepare your tracks for Professional Mixing Once you have decided that it may not be best to try to do it all yourself, and you think you have a song that is good enough to get professionally mixed, you need to prepare your tracks to send to the mixing engineer. Most professional mixing […]

Elliot Scheiner is one of the top producers/engineers in the world, with 24 Grammy nominations, 7 Grammy awards, 4 Emmy nominations,  1 Emmy award, 3 TEC Awards nominations, etc.... The list goes on!  Even if you don't know his name, you have most certainly heard his work. Yesterday I had to chance to meet Elliot […]

Want bigger & fuller sounding songs?  Less is More! The biggest problem I encounter with inexperienced artists, producers, and engineers these days is that there is too much of everything.  Too many parts in the song arrangements.  Too many tracks in the recording.  Too many plugins in the mix.  Too many frequencies competing with each […]

Revised & Updated! This is an old article I wrote in the early 90s. Quite a bit has changed since then, but most of the advice here still applies. With the reworking of my site in 2012, I have gone through this article and made some additions and revisions to make it more relevant. MAXIMIZING […]

Steve's picks for Music Business Success All You Need To Know to Succeed in the Music Business If you are serious about music business success, then the following books are absolutely REQUIRED READING! You can't expect to succeed in this business if you don't fully understand how the business works! Very few people are ever […]

I'm curious as to how often you might (and I know it probably depends wildly) cut high frequencies as a matter of course. For example, I usually cut quite a bit of low frequencies on most tracks just to keep the muddiness to a minimum in the overall mix. Do you also do the same […]

Just a quick question regarding compression - in the DAW environment, is it better to use "more" compressors on a track or fewer compressors " but work them harder? Theoretically, in the DAW world, you could have "unlimited" compressors on a track, but in a real studio, that is using hardware compressors, most of them, […]

I'm wondering if someone could explain what serial compression and parallel compression is, and the advantages of each and when one would be used vs the other. Serial compression is when the compressor is inserted in the signal chain and you use 100% of the processed/compressed signal. Parallel compression is when you set up a […]

I greatly appreciate this site. It is such a treat to be able to speak to experienced and knowledgeable mixers. Question: I know technology in the recording field has come far in the last 40 years, but compressors were around in the 60's yet you do not hear the "punch" on those records like you […]

Hi Steve, Thanks for the email about the “Yes We Can” videos on YouTube.  They were very educational.  Everyone involved in the production did a great job. I wanted to ask you a few questions about some of my observations: 1.      I noticed you started out recording vocals with an SM7 then later […]