Claim OwnershipMy Take on Music Recording with Doug Fearn
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© 2024 My Take on Music Recording with Doug Fearn
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Doug Fearn draws on his 50+ years as a recording engineer, record producer, studio owner, and pro audio equipment designer to explain the art and science of recording for the audiophile, music lover, and people in the music recording industry.
100 Episodes
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Send us a textIf you are working as a recording engineer, how did you learn your craft? A formal recording program? As an intern with an accomplished engineer? Or maybe you figured it out on your own.All are valid ways to get started. Many successful engineers used more than one approach.In this episode, I look at the various approaches, their pros and cons, and suggest ways that you might further your own education.Learning the art of recording requires time and effort -- and some innate tal...
Send us a textUsing a single microphone, or one stereo mic, to record a musical performance all at once without any overdubbing can result in a recording that is very compelling to the listener. When everyone is performing in the same space at the same time, usually without headphones, there is a musical interaction that occurs that we often lose in the typical session using lots of mics, extreme isolation, and many overdubs.It’s not for every song or composition. Some music benefits from the...
Send us a textWhen you are just starting out in recording music, you are likely to need microphones. And if you have been recording for a while, you may feel the need to add to you microphone collection.But how do you make those choices? In this episode, I look at the criteria that I think are important in picking mics to add to your studio. Simply choosing a mic that is what other people use, or was on a hit record, is not always the best way to go about this.I provide a logical approach to ...
Send us a textJoseph Arnold is a talented violinist that has played on a variety of projects I have produced. He is also an excellent writer, who just published his first book, titled, “Soul Force: How to discover your artistic purpose, create more freely, and make art that matters.”In this conversation, Joseph talks about his career path, his pursuit of art, and how his concepts of Soul Force guided him in his journey. We discuss his book, and its value to anyone who wants to create, well, a...
Send us a textIn this last of three episodes on the art of producing, I talk about my process for mixing. It is all part of the concept of a song from the beginning. Mixing is where everything comes together to create the version of the song that the artist and I have had.As an over-simplification, my approach is to turn up the things I like and turn down, or mute, the things I don’t like. But the details are much more complex than that and I explain what I do and why.I combine the mastering ...
Send us a textThis is the second of three episodes on the Art of Producing. In this one, I talk about the mics and equipment I use in my studio, and the reasons why.The example used for this series features an album project for singer-songwriter Corrie Lynn Green. It is an acoustic-based project, although there are some electric guitars and bass on some songs. I explain why I make certain decisions for this project, and how a recording with a different artist or genre would require a differen...
Send us a textThe art of producing a record requires knowledge of music, mastering the technical aspects of the recording process, and an ability to work with people.This is the first of a three-part series about producing. In this episode, I talk about the role of the producer, using a typical album project for Corrie Lynn Green as an example. Not all productions will follow this example, since there are many different styles of music, different artists and musicians, that you may encounter....
Send us a textOur perception of frequency balance varies with loudness, a fact documented by Harvey Fletcher and Wilden A. Munson, two scientists at Bell Laboratories. In 1933, they published a paper called, “Loudness, its definition, measurement and calculation.” It was groundbreaking science in the field of human hearing, and has implications today for how we perceive music. This is especially important when we are mixing.In this episode, I explain the basics of the Fletcher-Munson Curves a...
Send us a textAlmost all pop music features someone singing. Getting the best vocal performance is crucial, since most listeners respond to the words of a song and need to be able to hear them.In this episode, I first discuss the human factors involved in getting a great performance from singers, mostly from a producer’s viewpoint.And then I focus on the technical requirements of capturing that performance using microphones, mic preamps, processing, effects, and mixing. Often there are proble...
Send us a textThere are many things that are important to create the proper studio environment for creative success. Most of these things are pretty mundane, but they do make a difference.Examples I cover in this episode include microphone stands and accessories, music stands and instrument stands, chairs, headphones, studio lighting and climate control, and mic and other cables.It’s not the most exciting equipment we deal with, but it is still important to get it right. After 50+ years of do...
Send us a textEver since its announcement, I have been interested in learning more about Dolby Atmos. I was skeptical at first, primarily because of my experience with “Quad” back in the 1970s. That 4-channel concept never gain any popularity with either the listening public nor in the recording community. I presumed that Atmos would be similar, just more speakers. The early demo sessions I attended left me convinced that this was going to be another dead end, like Quad. The early mixes I hea...
Send us a textCompression and limiting are tools we use to modify the dynamic range of the music we record. In this episode, I present a brief history of where this technique came from, how it evolved over the years since the 1930s. I discuss the various ways that compression circuits work, from the variable-mu vacuum tube, to the optical compressor, the FET, the VCA, the PWM, and the digital limiters. I explain how these different approaches affect the sound in different ways.There are often...
Send us a textThis is part 2 of the Audiophiles Guide to Music Recording. You can listen to part 1 athttps://www.buzzsprout.com/942952/14335456Or you can access part 1 wherever you listen to podcasts.My Take on Music Recording is primarily aimed at people in the professional recording world, but there are a significant number of listeners who are music lovers and audiophiles. This episode provides an overview of the recording process for them. However, I think even people in our profession mi...
Send us a textMy Take on Music Recording is primarily aimed at people in the professional recording world, but there are a significant number of listeners who are music lovers and audiophiles. This episode provides an overview of the recording process for them. However, I think even people in our profession might enjoy how I attempt to explain the recording studio process in layman’s terms.This reflects my experience and how I work as a producer and engineer. I tend to carry over the tools an...
Send us a textMusic is meant to be heard in an appropriate acoustical environment. But many times, we have to record in a space that does not have the right sound to it. Artificial reverb is often the solution.In this episode, I talk about good room sound in a studio, and the earliest methods of creating a reverberation sound. That started with spring reverb, then acoustic echo chambers, tape delay, plate reverbs, and finally the digital reverbs that are used today on most recordings.I discus...
Send us a textIn this episode, I talk about software plug-ins vs hardware. It is a question that I get frequently from listeners. It is relatively short.Can a plug-in perfectly emulate a hardware device? What are the tradeoffs a plug-in designer needs to consider? What about a plug-in that has no hardware antecedent, but it something out of the mind of the designer? These are some of the topics considered.Thanks for listening, subscribing, and commenting. You can reach me with your questions ...
Send us a textEvery recording is made is some sort of space. It might be a room, and studio, a church, a concert hall, or even outside.The space where the music is performed, and where the microphones pick up the music always influences the sound of the recording.You might think that close-mic’ing in a dead room eliminates the contribution of the room, but it is still there, for better or worse. The room influences our perception of the performance. Our brain draws conclusions about the space...
Send us a textHow do we make our recordings better? I have thought about this for over 50 years and in this episode, I have tried to distill what I learned into a dozen general rules.The best way to make great recordings is to start with great performers. But even if you aren’t recording the best talent in the world, there are still ways to improve what you get.email: dwfearn@dwfearn.comwww.youtube.com/c/DWFearnhttps://dwfearn.com/
Send us a textWhat if you were suddenly confronted with recording an instrument you had never had in the studio before? Or one you never heard before? Or one you never knew existed?How do you figure out how to capture its sound? Where do you place a microphone? What microphone will you use?In this episode I suggest various ways to evaluate an unfamiliar instrument or sound, using some examples from my own experience, and a few rules of thumb to get started.This topic was suggested by a listen...
Send us a textAfter three and a half years of producing the “My Take on Music Recording” podcast, I thought it would be useful to review the 80+ episodes and point out some of the interesting topics you might have overlooked.You might have missed some of the earlier episodes, or skipped over them because they did not interest you at the time.The most popular episode of all is the very first one, from March 2020, called “Your Hearing is Amazing.” Everything we do depends on our hearing and in ...
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