Recording & Mixing – Details, episodes & analysis

Pro Audio Design Engineer Andy Bereza summarises his impressive career in a chat with Paul Gilby. Andy founded Allen & Heath Mixers before working for TEAC/Tascam, where he conceived the TEAC Portastudio the portable multitrack cassette tape recorder that revolutionised the home recording market in the 1980s. He then co-founded Bandive-Turnkey where he developed a range of budget signal processors and the famous Great British Spring reverb to sell to the rapidly expanding Home Studio Recording market. At the same time, he was a consultant for the Fostex X15 multitrack cassette as well as helping to steer further product designs.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:34 - Getting Into Electronics
01:45 - Building Custom Desks
04:09 - Allen & Heath Mixers
06:07 - The Minimixer
08:54 - The Pink Floyd Desks
12:24 - Allen & Heath Mod II Mixer
13:20 - Expanding The Company
15:23 - Moving To Tascam
16:58 - Constructing The Portastudio
21:57 - Setting Up Bandive / Turnkey
24:55 - Creating Products For The Home Studio
29:03 - Fostex Releases in the 80s
30:48 - Bandive Seck Mixers
32:08 - Expanding Turnkey
35:14 - Selling To Harman
38:38 - Launching Digital Postcards
41:07 - A Brief Career Summary
42:13 - Proudest Career Moment

Andy Bereza Biog
Andy Bereza started his career as a Audio Design Engineer after moving to London in 1967 to study Electronics at Chelsea University. A chance encounter with Siggy Jackson in Tin Pan Alley gave him his first custom commission and many more soon followed, with Andy building mixers for Bill Shepherd (producer of the Bee Gees), Alan Price, Maurice Gibb and also a location recording mixer for the Clockwork Orange movie.

In 1970 Andy became the Founder of Allen & Heath, where he initially developed the black range of mixers, then their first mass market product the Minimix. At the same time he creating custom quadraphonic live desks for The Who along with Pink Floyd's Pompeii and Dark Side Of The Moon touring desks.

In 1975, Andy joined TEAC America and was employed to introduce Tascam into Europe. Then in 1976 he was contracted directly with TEAC Japan where he developed the iconic Portastudio that changed the face of the home recording industry. In 1977 he became one of the founders of Bandive Ltd and helped to develop further products for the home recording market and created the popular Turnkey By Mail catalogue during the late 1970s to mid 80s. Bandive then opened the Turnkey retail store in central London.

Following the sale of Bandive / Turnkey to Harman UK in 1987, he briefly became their Marketing Director, before signing up to become Managing Director of Fostex in 1991. Later in the 90s Andy left the Pro Audio industry and turned his attention to multimedia where he developed interactive product catalogues on CD-ROM.

Paul Gilby Biog
Paul Gilby is the co-founder, along with his brother Ian, of Sound On Sound magazine in 1985. Having written many product reviews and interviews over the years he now heads up the Digital Media side of the business managing the team that looks after the SOS website as well as the video and podcast productions.

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

Paul White and Hugh Robjohns discuss the basics of a good home studio setup, including choosing the right equipment and setting up your space correctly for achieving the best recording and mixing results.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:14 - Minimum Equipment
00:54 - Audio Interfaces
02:46 - Headphones and Speakers
03:21 - Choosing A Microphone
08:55 - Additional Accessories
12:27 - Desks And Monitor Stands
16:21 - Speakers And Acoustic Treatment
21:06 - Choosing Studio Monitors
22:35 - Subwoofers And Bass Traps
26:16 - Cutting Reflections For Vocals
28:48 - Recap

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/studio-sos-making-small-room-sound-good

Paul White Biog
Paul White initially trained in electronics at The Royal Radar Establishment in Malvern then went on to work with Malvern Instruments, a company specialising in laser analysis equipment, before moving into technical writing. 

He joined the Sound On Sound team in 1991 where he became Editor In Chief, a position he held for many years before recently becoming Executive Editor. Paul has written more than 20 recording and music technology textbooks, the latest being The Producer’s Manual.

Having established his own multitrack home studio in the 1980s he’s worked with many notable names including Bert Jansch and Gordon Giltrap. He’s played in various bands over the years and currently collaborates with Malvern musician Mark Soden, under the name of Cydonia Collective. Paul still performs live claiming that as he has suffered for his music he doesn’t see why everyone else shouldn’t too!

http://www.cydoniacollective.co.uk/

Hugh Robjohns Biog
Hugh Robjohns has been Sound On Sound´s Technical Editor since 1997. Prior to that he worked in a variety of (mostly) sound-related roles in BBC Television, ending up as a Sound Operations Lecturer at the BBC´s technical training centre. He continues to provide audio consultancy and bespoke broadcast audio training services all over the world, lectures at professional and public conventions, and occasionally records and masters acoustic and classical music too!

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

In part 2 of this 3-part series, Rob Toulson explains how to optimise the drum sound for recording by experimenting with drum head, damping system, tuning and drum shell combinations.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
01:09 - Drum Heads
01:44 - Mersenne's Laws
04:05 - 1 and 2 Ply Drum Heads
05:45 - Damping Systems
07:10 - Centre Dot Drum Heads
09:27 - Choosing Your Timbre
11:44 - Selecting Your Drum Shells
14:25 - Optimising The Whole Kit
19:41 - Tuning The Kick Drum

Professor Rob Toulson Biog
Rob is Director of RT60 Ltd, who develop mobile apps for musicians and sound engineers. RT60’s iDrumTune Pro app assists drummers with learning the skills of drum tuning and has been the number one music app in over 100 countries since its launch in 2012. More recently, Rob and RT60 developed Songzap, which simplifies the process of recording and capturing musical ideas, enabling songwriters to focus exclusively on their creativity.

Rob stared his career as a mechanical engineer with a doctorate in digital signal processing, before following his passion and moving into the field of music technology and specialising in percussion acoustics and audio software development. Rob has held a number of academic research roles in his career, including Professor of Creative Industries at University of Westminster and Director of the CoDE Research Institute at Anglia Ruskin University. Rob’s also a successful musician, music producer and sound designer, having worked with many artists including Talvin Singh, Wilfy Williams and Mediaeval Baebes, who have previously topped the UK Classical Music Chart.

Rob is author of a number of music related books and articles, including ‘Drum Sound and Drum Tuning’, published by Routledge in 2021, and co-editor of the ‘Innovation In Music’ book series, which is also published by Routledge. His sound design work has been included in films by BAFTA Winner Shreepali Patel and has been showcased at Glastonbury Festival, The V&A and The Natural History Museum.

https://www.robtoulson.com/
https://www.rt60.uk/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

Rob Toulson dives into the science behind how drums produce sound in this three-part series. In part one he talks us through the different pitches, frequencies and overtones, to help producers, recording engineers and indeed drummers to better understand the essentials of tuning.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
01:16 - Dealing With Multiple Frequencies
05:19 - Tuning The Fundamental Frequency
10:56 - Smoothing Out Modulation
13:31 - Harmonic Overtones
19:12 - Controlling Decay And Damping
23:11 - Summary

Professor Rob Toulson Biog
Rob is Director of RT60 Ltd, who develop mobile apps for musicians and sound engineers. RT60’s iDrumTune Pro app assists drummers with learning the skills of drum tuning and has been the number one music app in over 100 countries since its launch in 2012. More recently, Rob and RT60 developed Songzap, which simplifies the process of recording and capturing musical ideas, enabling songwriters to focus exclusively on their creativity.

Rob stared his career as a mechanical engineer with a doctorate in digital signal processing, before following his passion and moving into the field of music technology and specialising in percussion acoustics and audio software development. Rob has held a number of academic research roles in his career, including Professor of Creative Industries at University of Westminster and Director of the CoDE Research Institute at Anglia Ruskin University. Rob’s also a successful musician, music producer and sound designer, having worked with many artists including Talvin Singh, Wilfy Williams and Mediaeval Baebes, who have previously topped the UK Classical Music Chart.

Rob is author of a number of music related books and articles, including ‘Drum Sound and Drum Tuning’, published by Routledge in 2021, and co-editor of the ‘Innovation In Music’ book series, which is also published by Routledge. His sound design work has been included in films by BAFTA Winner Shreepali Patel and has been showcased at Glastonbury Festival, The V&A and The Natural History Museum.

https://www.robtoulson.com/
https://www.rt60.uk/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

Eddie Bazil dives into some of his favourite plug-ins and gives us a series of examples on how to use these tools creatively for designing unique and interesting beats, sequences and mixes.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:21 - What Makes A Tool Creative?
03:25 - Example 1: A Cinematic Piano Effect
07:03 - Example 2: Creating A More Dynamic Beat
10:19 - Example 3: Sequencer-Based Multi Effects On A Drum Beat
13:26 - Example 4: Reshaping A Musical Sequence
21:21 - Example 5: A Sound Design Exercise

Credits
‘Puppet’ track written, performed and recorded by John Walden

Vocals by Yvonne McKeown

Eddie Bazil Biog
Eddie Bazil launched his music industry career at the age of 17 as a synth programmer for a range of Electro / New Wave bands including Art of Noise, Spandau Ballet, Pet Shop Boys, Bobin, Paul Dee, DJ Krush, DJ Shadow, Jets Orchestra. By his 20s he was working as a sound designer for Akai, Roland Emu/Ensoniq, eventually signing on exclusively with the latter. Later, due to a growing demand for software instruments and libraries, Eddie started to develop libraries for various software manufacturers, including Native Instruments, Kiesel, Sound Effects Library, Arturia and Propellerheads. A meeting with Phil Allen, a Capital Radio DJ, resulted in the company Samplecraze, which Eddie has spent 20 years developing as an educational resource. At this time he trained in music production and soon gained a number of prominent contracts working with some notable artistes such as Busta Rhymes, Greensleeves, 9 Bar, SFP, Sleeveless, Chris Campbell and Gam Productions. He contracted to Island Records and Chrysalis as a producer and remixer,  plus was commissioned to write the score for Macbeth that ran at 2 Way Mirror at Alexander Palace for the Cambridge Shakespeare Company. His ongoing development of Samplecraze has led to him offering educational workshops and classes, releasing four books via PC Publishing and becoming a contributor and forum moderator for Sound On Sound. Recently he has established The Audio Production Hub for online education and been invited by the Recording Academy to become a Grammy judge.
https://eddiebazil.co.uk/

https://samplecraze.com/

https://theaudioproductionhub.pivotshare.com/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

In this fourth and final episode, David Mellor, a sound engineer and the founder and Course Director of Audio Masterclass, delves into Gain Staging your plug-ins and how to avoid clipping during the mixing and mastering stages.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction

00:50 - Gain Staging Your Plug-ins
08:08 - 32-Bit Float
11:35 - Mixing And Mastering
16:27 - Gain Staging The Mix
19:32 - Headroom
21:50 - Mastering Using LUFS

Listen to Gain Staging Episode 1
Listen to Gain Staging Episode 2
Listen to Gain Staging Episode 3

David Mellor Biog
David Mellor got his start in pro audio through the Tonmeister course at Surrey University studying music, piano performance, acoustics, electronics, electro-acoustics and recording.

He went on to work at London's Royal Opera House, with responsibilities including sound design, front-of-house operation, stage monitoring and electronic design satisfying the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He has also had over 600 works published in the field of production music, including the Chappell and Carlin music libraries (now combined into Universal Publishing Production Music). Notable uses of his music include the BBC's Horizon, Fahrenheit 911, and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

David has been actively involved in Audio Education since 1986, teaching students of City of Westminster College and Westminster University, and also returning to lecture at Surrey University. He also worked with John Cage on the International Dance Course at the University of Surrey. David now specialises in online audio education and has been Course Director of Audio Masterclass since 2001.

https://www.audiomasterclass.com/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

David Mellor, a sound engineer and the founder and Course Director of Audio Masterclass, introduces us to Gain Staging in a brand new series of podcasts. In the third episode David continues looking at preamps, outlines the use of VU Meters and talks about the benefits of balancing a track prior to mixing.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction

00:56 - More About Preamps
05:38 - Preamps With Valves
09:20 - The Mixing Process
16:17 - Using VU Meters
24:05 - Mixing During Recording

Listen to Gain Staging Episode 1
Listen to Gain Staging Episode 2
Listen to Gain Staging Episode 4

David Mellor Biog
David Mellor got his start in pro audio through the Tonmeister course at Surrey University studying music, piano performance, acoustics, electronics, electro-acoustics and recording.

He went on to work at London's Royal Opera House, with responsibilities including sound design, front-of-house operation, stage monitoring and electronic design satisfying the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He has also had over 600 works published in the field of production music, including the Chappell and Carlin music libraries (now combined into Universal Publishing Production Music). Notable uses of his music include the BBC's Horizon, Fahrenheit 911, and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

David has been actively involved in Audio Education since 1986, teaching students of City of Westminster College and Westminster University, and also returning to lecture at Surrey University. He also worked with John Cage on the International Dance Course at the University of Surrey. David now specialises in online audio education and has been Course Director of Audio Masterclass since 2001.

https://www.audiomasterclass.com/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

David Mellor, a sound engineer and the founder and Course Director of Audio Masterclass, introduces us to Gain Staging in a brand new series of podcasts. In the second episode David focuses on gain staging during recording, by balancing mic input, preamps and gain within your DAW to achieve the optimal sound level.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction

00:40 - Dynamic Microphones

05:19 - Capacitor Microphones

11:25 - Gain Staging First Step

14:00 - The Pre-amp

16:39 - Headroom

20:49 - Audio Examples

Listen to Gain Staging Episode 1
Listen to Gain Staging Episode 3
Listen to Gain Staging Episode 4

David Mellor Biog
David Mellor got his start in pro audio through the Tonmeister course at Surrey University studying music, piano performance, acoustics, electronics, electro-acoustics and recording.

He went on to work at London's Royal Opera House, with responsibilities including sound design, front-of-house operation, stage monitoring and electronic design satisfying the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He has also had over 600 works published in the field of production music, including the Chappell and Carlin music libraries (now combined into Universal Publishing Production Music). Notable uses of his music include the BBC's Horizon, Fahrenheit 911, and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

David has been actively involved in Audio Education since 1986, teaching students of City of Westminster College and Westminster University, and also returning to lecture at Surrey University. He also worked with John Cage on the International Dance Course at the University of Surrey. David now specialises in online audio education and has been Course Director of Audio Masterclass since 2001.

https://www.audiomasterclass.com/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

David Mellor, a sound engineer and the founder and Course Director of Audio Masterclass, introduces us to Gain Staging in a brand new series of podcasts. In this first episode he teaches the correct use of terminology and gives his three golden rules of Gain Staging.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
01:38 - Using The Correct Terminology
05:56 - Why Use Gain Staging?
11:04 - The Benefits Of Gain Staging
15:31 - Working In Digital Audio
27:17 - Three Golden Rules Of Gain Staging

Listen to Gain Staging Episode 2
Listen to Gain Staging Episode 3
Listen to Gain Staging Episode 4

David Mellor Biog
David Mellor got his start in pro audio through the Tonmeister course at Surrey University studying music, piano performance, acoustics, electronics, electro-acoustics and recording.

He went on to work at London's Royal Opera House, with responsibilities including sound design, front-of-house operation, stage monitoring and electronic design satisfying the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He has also had over 600 works published in the field of production music, including the Chappell and Carlin music libraries (now combined into Universal Publishing Production Music). Notable uses of his music include the BBC's Horizon, Fahrenheit 911, and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

David has been actively involved in Audio Education since 1986, teaching students of City of Westminster College and Westminster University, and also returning to lecture at Surrey University. He also worked with John Cage on the International Dance Course at the University of Surrey. David now specialises in online audio education and has been Course Director of Audio Masterclass since 2001.

https://www.audiomasterclass.com/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

Eddie Bazil demystifies Compression and Expansion with a detailed explanation of their uses and with a range of practical examples using plug-ins.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:22 - Compressors And Expanders Explained
01:33 - Compressor Behavioural Types
02:40 - Common Compressor Topologies
06:06 - Example 1: Boz Digital Manic Compressor On Drums
10:26 - Example 2: FabFilter Pro MB On A Synth Line
13:28 - Example 3: PreSonus Studio One Expander On A Drum Beat
15:26 - Example 4: A Drum Beat Using Different Topologies
20:24 - Example 5: Using Sidechaining On Reverb
23:28 - Example 6: FabFilter Pro MB On A Vocal Line
27:16 - Example 7: Sidechain Compression And Expansion To Create Texture And Motion

Credits
Example 6 - The song and the poem are both called Everyone Sang. The poem was by Sigfried Sassoon and was set to music and performed by Anne Gregson.
www.annegregson.co.uk
Recorded at www.mrpunch.info

Eddie Bazil Biog
Eddie Bazil launched his music industry career at the age of 17 as a synth programmer for a range of Electro / New Wave bands including Art of Noise, Spandau Ballet, Pet Shop Boys, Bobin, Paul Dee, DJ Krush, DJ Shadow, Jets Orchestra. By his 20s he was working as a sound designer for Akai, Roland Emu/Ensoniq, eventually signing on exclusively with the latter. Later, due to a growing demand for software instruments and libraries, Eddie started to develop libraries for various software manufacturers, including Native Instruments, Kiesel, Sound Effects Library, Arturia and Propellerheads. A meeting with Phil Allen, a Capital Radio DJ, resulted in the company Samplecraze, which Eddie has spent 20 years developing as an educational resource. At this time he trained in music production and soon gained a number of prominent contracts working with some notable artistes such as Busta Rhymes, Greensleeves, 9 Bar, SFP, Sleeveless, Chris Campbell and Gam Productions. He contracted to Island Records and Chrysalis as a producer and remixer,  plus was commissioned to write the score for Macbeth that ran at 2 Way Mirror at Alexander Palace for the Cambridge Shakespeare Company. His ongoing development of Samplecraze has led to him offering educational workshops and classes, releasing four books via PC Publishing and becoming a contributor and forum moderator for Sound On Sound. Recently he has established The Audio Production Hub for online education and been invited by the Recording Academy to become a Grammy judge.
https://eddiebazil.co.uk/

https://samplecraze.com/

https://theaudioproductionhub.pivotshare.com/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts