Music Tech Magazine - Issue 66

This month’s cover feature explores the black art of recording electric guitar, focusing on the key areas of mic’ing, tracking and mixing. We also go deep inside Logic Pro in the first instalment of Logic Pro Tips & Tricks.

Publish date: 20 August 2008

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Issue 66 of Music Tech Magazine is out now in newsagents throughout the UK.

In the issue…

Features
Recording Electric Guitar
The popularity of guitar-based music shows no sign of waning, so the task of recording electric guitar remains one of the more typical challenges faced by today’s producers and engineers. The good news is that guitars are, in many cases, one of the easier types of instrument to record, providing that you approach the task armed with some knowledge, the right kind of kit and a willingness to experiment…

Mixing With Logic Pro 8
The hardware mixer – once the centrepiece of every recoording studio - is increasingly being ditched in favour of the virtual mixing facilities built-in to every popular DAW. In this first instalment, we explore the tools offered by Apple’s pro-end soft studio.

Ten Minute Masters
Digital Microphones
The microphone as we know it today is the result of steady evolution and development over the past 130 or so years. But recently, a new breed of microphone has appeared, one that somehow doesn’t quite make sense given that the natural world surrounding us is analogue. Enter the digital microphone…

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Headphone Monitoring
Creating an effective headphone mix can make a big difference to the quality of the performances you manage to capture. Mark Cousins takes his cue.

This Month’s Workshops
Cubase 4.1
Having focussed on audio, MIDI, Arranger and Folder tracks in last month’s instalment, Hollin Jones turns his attention to Cubase’s remaining track types.ubase offers facilities for working with many different types of track, but what exactly do they do? Hollin Jones sheds some light on the matter.
Ableton Live 7
Tired of using your mouse and keyboard to make fine adjustments to parameters in Live? Jon Margulies shows you how to put old controllers to good use.
Sonar 7
Sonar’s MIDI tools include a flexible step sequencer, customisable edit tools, pitch-to-MIDI conversion and more. Brian Smithers puts it all together.
Reason 4
Give those mechanical-sounding MIDI tracks some natural swing and groove with one of Reason’s lesser-known modules. Hollin Jones puts the ReGroove mixer into gear.

Reviews
New products road-tested this month include the Moog Little Phatty Stage 2, Allen & Heath Xone:2D, Audio Technica M3, PreSonus Monitor Station, IK AmpliTude Metal, AKAI MPC5000, Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0 and more.

ON THE DVD

Session Essentials

This month’s collection of sounds further extends the music-making opportunities presented by samples libraries. Culled from a range of well-respected Loopmasters titles, these sounds are all previously unheard, but fans of the titles will recognise their pedigree immediately. There’s everything from basses and beats to synths, vox and guitars, spanning a range of genres from jazz to hip hop.
www.loopmasters.com

Electronic Rhythms
If building up drum tracks from scratch is your thing, dig into this complete beat construction kit developed for Music Tech by Equinox Sounds. Comprising hi-hats, kicks, snares and percussion, you’ll be cooking up beats in no time.
www.equinoxsounds.com

Dance Collection
This eclectic collection of loops brings you everything you need to construct contemporary dance tracks. Compiled by Producer Pack especially for Music Tech, the library includes Kontakt and NN-XT patches alongside the WAV-format sounds.
www.producerpack.com

All the latest demos…
Auricula Software Ear Training Bundle, discoDSP Discovery, DSK Music Virtuoso, Eska QUODfm, HG Fortune STS-33, QuikQuak Fusion Field, Xoxos Friction and more…

Music Tech Focus

On sale Thursday 4 September - Music Tech Focus: Logic Pro

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