The voice is the one instrument we take with us everywhere we go – even into the shower. Yet many of us spend less time working on vocal techniques than we do learning other instruments. Whether you are a lead vocalist, background vocalist, or just record your voice for “special effects”, these videos will teach you to warm up your voice, help you achieve a better vocal sound, and also protect your voice by teaching you to sing with a proper technique.

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At Audiotuts+ we irregularly put up a reader track for workshopping and critique (find out how to submit a track). This is how it works: you upload your song, and every week or so we’ll publish one here and step away from the podium. The floor is yours to talk about the track and how the artist can fix problems in and improve upon the mix and the song.

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Miking up an instrument isn’t an easy thing. It’s not like a digital camera where you point towards what you want to capture and then click. Super cool vacation photo! You might not end up with a great photo, but you can certainly make it better afterwards. Not to offend photographers, but in audio, if you have a lousy source sound from the beginning, you are going to end up with a lousy mixed sound in the end.

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It’s easy to lock some piano chords to a drum beat or groove of your choice by using a few simple tricks. We’ll make a simple beat, paint in some piano chords and then lock them together so they groove together by side-chaining.

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In this week’s Audio Premium content, Ryan Leach takes us for a detailed tour through the world of counterpoint.

To learn more about what you get as part of Audio Premium, read this. To take a peek inside this tutorial, hit the jump!

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A variety of musical instruments add interest and depth to a recording. What musical instruments do you play?

Each Tuesday we open our mic to readers and lurkers alike to come out of the woodwork and tell us your thoughts and opinion, your experiences and mistakes, what you love and what you hate. We want to hear from you, and here’s your chance.

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Unless you frequently experiment with a wide variety of musical styles and genres, it can be easy to fall into musical habits or patterns that prevent your songs from sounding fresh – or worse – can cause many of your songs to sound the same. Overuse of simple on-beat or off-beat basslines is one way that artists might falter in crafting a more compelling or unique song. With this tutorial, I’d like to offer some suggestions and inspirations for introducing new variety and flavor into your basslines. By experimenting with a variety of styles and approaches, you can breathe new life into old tunes, as well as create new tunes built from exciting new foundations.

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Drums are the foundation of just about any kind of music. Win this book to learn just about everything you need to know about creating great rhythm tracks. To enter, all you’ve gotta do is comment! One random commenter will be chosen as winner. Too easy.

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The ability to split and merge different sources of audio using the Spider Audio unit is useful indeed, but it’s the Spider CV unit that really allows users to explore new ideas and ways of manipulating sound. Let’s take a look at using this device to totally change the sound of our instrument devices.

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Being a musician seems glamorous to the outsider. The truth is, there is paperwork to be done and legal precautions to take, just like in any other business—whether you’re selling millions of tracks on iTunes every week, or you’re losing money.

Here are five forms and contracts that every musician needs; some you should have ready and printed, on hand around the office (or studio or bedroom…) and others aren’t used so frequently but you should have a document ready to be printed and put into use.

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