Eric Shafer is a music producer and audio engineer from Chicago, Illinois. He has worked on both classical and popular music projects, and is currently composing music for today's top artists and future artists.
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One of the most important aspects in hip-hop and popular music is the drumbeat. What makes it sound so big? The drum patterns appear so simple, so why are they so hard to create? Well, in this tutorial, we’re going to break down the fundamental elements of a hip-hop beat.
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Twice a month we revisit some of our reader favorite posts from throughout the history of Audiotuts+. This tutorial was first published in January 2009.
Reason’s Combinator is a very interesting tool. It is all too tempting for new Reason users to use the Combinator as simply another instrument in which to load patches. In reality, the Combinator is far more than that, and has the ability to be the most powerful tool available to you in Reason. You may be a bit skeptical, but in this tutorial, I’m going to prove to you that the Combinator is truly Reason’s deadliest weapon.
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Twice a month we revisit some of our reader favorite posts from throughout the history of Audiotuts+. This tutorial was first published in November 2008.
In 2008, perhaps no song has dominated the charts more than Lil’ Wayne’s Lollipop. Produced by Jim Jonsin, Lollipop is a prime example of how a hit song does not have to be complex; instead, it is a perfect blend of simplicity and catchiness.
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Twice a month we revisit some of our reader favorite posts from throughout the history of Audiotuts+. This tutorial was first published in August 2008.
Have you ever been listening to a song and realized “Hey, I’ve heard part of this before!”. What you discovered is called “sampling”, a process by which part of a song, or a sound, is captured and played back to create a new song.
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When mixing down a track, it’s important to keep all elements in balance with each other, and for many beginning and even seasoned audio engineers, it can be quite a challenge to envision the finished product from a rough mix.
One of the best ways to make sure you end up with the proper finished mix is to create more than one mix. By tweaking the levels, compression and other parts of the mix, it’s easy to create alternative mixes that can be great for comparison. In this quick tip, we’ll examine what an alternative mix is and how to create your own.
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Twice a month we revisit some of our reader favorite posts from throughout the history of Audiotuts+. This tutorial was first published in December 2008.
Perhaps no genre has been as popular in recent years as Hip Hop. However, Hip Hop is hardly a new phenomenon, so in this article, we’re going to take an in-depth look at its history and try to make sense of it all.
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Sibelius is one of the industry standard tools for composing and transcribing music, while Pro Tools is one of the industry standard digital audio workstations for audio producers and engineers alike. In this tutorial, we’ll look at how to combine these two complex tools into a production workflow.
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Reason is a great program for percussion, particularly with the ease of use of the Redrum drum machine. However, stock sounds won’t always cut it, so in this tutorial, we’ll look at some secrets for turning those stock sounds into unique masterpieces. Of course, these techniques can be applied to virtually any DAW.
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Celemony Melodyne is a powerful pitch correction tool commonly used by producers and engineers for vocal pitch corrections. Melodyne can also do much more, all while maintaining a professional and convincing sound. Today, we’re going to look at a couple of different ways Melodyne can help you in your next studio project.
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In this tutorial, we’re going to work through a hands-on workshop and create several Thor synthesizer patches. Then we’ll take our new patches and combine them into a redistributable Reason refill using Reason Refill Packer.
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If you've been thinking about recording music or dabbling in audio engineering, then kick-start the process by grabbing a copy of Björgvin's book and start learning how you can record great music with whatever equipment you've got!
Just getting started? Start with our basix tutorials on the fundamentals. View All Basix Tutorials
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