Audio Recording
If you'd like to become an Audio Engineer someday, these tutorials will help get you started.
This series of tutorials is designed to teach beginners about the process of recording music. In this series, I've used Audacity or Audition (from Adobe) for most of the demonstrations. However, I'll also be bringing in additional DAW's such as Pro Tools, Reaper, and Logic to help show you that once you've mastered one DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), the techniques translate very easily to other DAW's.
I'm also sharing the links to the original blog posts that I made when I released each of these videos. Usually, the video covers everything, but if you really want to fully understand a subject, I've often included additional info and links in the corresponding blog posts. Or go into the blog post and read it first, because the videos are embedded in the blog posts too.
If you're looking tutorials about the production of EDM, house, and techno music, go here: Music Production
Basic Recording with a Portable Audio Recorder
In this video, I'll introduce myself and show you how to record audio if you have the most basic of equipment, either just a portable audio recorder or a video camera. We'll then take that single track (which will be either a mono or stereo track) and import it into our audio editing software in order to turn it into an MP3 or WAV file.
Blog post: djbolivia.blogspot.com/2013/01/audio-recording-tutorial-01-basic.html
Single Pass (multi-track) Recording
In this video, we'll be recording directly into your audio editing software, using a microphone hooked up to a sound card which then passes the audio directly into one of the tracks in your DAW.
Blog post: djbolivia.blogspot.com/2013/04/audio-recording-tutorial-02-basic-multi.html
Multi-Tracking: Recording Audio
Now we're starting to approach a more complex topic. We'll follow the same process as the previous video, in order to get a track of audio into our DAW, but this will be the first of several tracks in a more complex project.
Blog post: djbolivia.blogspot.com/2013/04/audio-recording-tutorials-03-to-05.html
Multi-Tracking: Editing Audio
Now that we have several separate tracks (audio layers) for our product, we need to start learning how to do basic editing.
Blog post: Same as previous video
Multi-Tracking: More Editing, Effects, Bouncing
We'll do a bit more editing, then we'll add some effects and bounce the session into a single stereo audio file that we can share with the world. Also, although it's not really important, here's a three-minute video showing the final result of the project that we've worked on so far: After The Gold Rush
Blog post: Same as previous two videos
Sampling Rates, Sample Depth, Binary
This one's pretty straight-forward. By the end of this video, I hope you'll understand the different between different sample rates (such as 44.1 Khz versus 48 KHz), different sample depths (16-bit versus 32-bit), and have a better general understanding of binary numbering. It helps to understand binary, because it clarifies the foundation of why "powers of 2" are usually quite important in computers.
Blog post: djbolivia.blogspot.com/2013/04/basic-mathematics-of-sound-sample-rate.html
Basic MIDI, Virtual Instruments
Until now, we've stored our audio in the computer as a digital audio file. However, there's another powerful way to represent music, by using MIDI. MIDI is a type of "symbolic code" for a pattern of notes. You can then play your MIDI pattern back through any of thousands of different VSTi's (Virtual Studio Technology Instruments) in order to hear the melody as if it was coming out of a specific instrument. Audio Engineers also use VST plug-ins (FX, aka. effects). However, a VST effect plug-in is slightly different than a VSTi. The VSTi creates the music, and the VST changes that music using things like reverb, echo, delay, chorus, and other FX. We're focusing on VSTi's in this video.
Blog post: djbolivia.blogspot.com/2013/04/audio-recording-tutorial-07-basic-midi.html
Decibel Measurement Systems
Decibels are a measure of sound. Well, they're a measure of acoustic energy. Actually, there are a lot of different types of decimal measurements, which measure lots of different types of energy. Unfortunately, the number of decibels of sound that you hear from the speaker system at a concert doesn't translate directly at all to the decibels of amplitude in a DAW. It's confusing, and I'll try to make it all make sense.
Blog post: djbolivia.blogspot.com/2013/04/understanding-decibel-measurement.html
Nyquist Theorum, Anti-Aliasing, Dithering
The Nyquist-Shannon Theorum states that the sampling rate must be double the pitch of the upper range of the audio being recorded, in order to avoid aliasing. But what is aliasing, and how does anti-aliasing prevent it? Why are we adding random bits to our digital audio (dithering) to improve the quality of the audio? This is starting to get deeper into theory, but this is really useful stuff that you'll need know if you want to be an audio engineer, and it will help you step up your recording game even if you just want to do basic studio recording.
Blog post: djbolivia.blogspot.com/2013/04/nyquist-anti-aliasing-quantization.html
Recording Voice-Overs
The last video was deep, so let's take a break and step back to something basic: Recording a voice-over that you can use for a radio show or studio DJ mix.
Blog post: Not needed
USB Microphones
Traditionally, recording studios have always used analog microphones of various types (dynamic, condenser, or ribbon), and these mics were hooked up to the console using an XLR cord. Over the last few decades though, USB microphones have become very popular. Basically, they take the old style of microphone and replace the XLR connection into the console with a USB connection that is good for anyone recording directly into a computer DAW.
Blog post: djbolivia.blogspot.com/2014/02/exploring-usb-microphones.html
DI Boxes
A Direct Injection (DI) box is used when connecting a musical instrument or microphone to a console or sound card. But why? What's the difference between a mono versus a stereo DI, or a passive versus active DI?
Blog post: djbolivia.blogspot.com/2015/01/understanding-how-di-or-direct-boxes.html
Collaborating Remotely
You don't need to be in the same studio space as another musician! Travelling to work together was a given twenty years ago. Now, musicians can work in their own studios, share their work through Dropbox or Google Drive, and collaborate effectively with peers around the globe.
Blog post: djbolivia.blogspot.com/2016/01/collaborating-with-remote-artists.html