Outside Scoop: Top 10 Vocal Compressor Plugins, How to Master Your Music, and More

Do you own all 10 vocal compressor plugins from MixbusTV’s roundup?

The top educational production resources, from around the web, were publishing content in full force this week; there’s tons up material to catch up on. This Outside Scoop features gear roundups, mixing and mastering tutorials, and production walkthroughs. Learn how to write a Billie Eilish style track, collaborate with other producers, EQ acoustic guitar, and plenty of other exciting skills.

5 Great API 550 EQ Plugins (+ 5 Pretty Good Ones Too)

Brad Pack of The Pro Audio Files states that “API was founded in 1969 by the great Saul Walker. Known for their bright, open, punchy sound, API products have been used on countless hit records over the last 50 years. One of their most coveted products is the 550 Series EQ.” For an in-depth look at some top-notch API 550 EQ emulations, read the full article via The Pro Audio Files.

How To Produce & Write A Billie Eilish Style Track

Make Pop Music is back at it again with a great walkthrough tutorial that explains how Austin Hull wrote a Billie Eilish style track from scratch. This video contains plenty of useful production, mixing, and mastering tips. With the internet currently thoroughly enamored of Billie Eilish’s newest album WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?, this tutorial was created at exactly the right time.

4 Tips to Effectively Collaborate with Music Producers

If you’re finally ready to reach out to other music producers and start collaborating with them, it’s worth checking out this list of collaboration tips that Black Ghost Audio has put together. Touching on finding the right producer, deciding on a direction for your project, setting up a file sharing system, and ensuring that you put a royalty split contract in place, Black Ghost Audio has you covered.

Top 10 Vocal Compressor Plugins

David from MixbusTV walks through 10 of his favorite vocal compressors. Different vocals and different songs call for different types of compression, so it does make sense to own multiple plugin compressors. Some notable entries in this roundup include the Waves MV2, Klanghelm MJUC, and API 2500. Check out the full video for a brief look at some of the notable features on these compressors, along with many more.

How to Master Your Music (3 Easy Steps)

Hiring a mastering engineer is almost standard if you’re releasing music at a professional level, but for hobbyist music makers, you may still able to achieve decent results mastering your music yourself. Musician on a Mission explores 3 simple mastering steps that involve EQ, compression, and limiting. There’s also a 14 Step Mastering Cheat Sheet that you can download for free.

4 Tips for EQ’ing Acoustic Guitar in a Mix

The way you go about EQing a track is incredibly important, and entirely dependent on the arrangement you’re working with. Ian Vargo of The Pro Audio Files explains why recording methods impact the way you need to go about EQing your mixes, and why resorting to an EQ before other mixing tools is often a good choice. This article also offers a handful of unique acoustic guitar recording and mixing tips.

Crafting the Score of APOLLO 11 with Matt Morton

Matt Morton composed the score of Apollo 11, and he provides some great insight into his creative process in this short YouTube video. When creating the Apollo 11 soundtrack, his primary goal was to capture the electronic sounds of 1969. Using plenty of analog synths, including the reissued Moog Synthesizer IIIc (which Moog only created 25 of), he demonstrates how he tirelessly went about recording layer upon layer of sound for Apollo 11.

10 Tips to Improve Your Room’s Acoustics

Dealing with an acoustically troublesome room can be tough, but Andy Jones of MusicTech has compiled 10 tips to help you combat poor room acoustics. Jones says that “Your room, ideally, should have non-reflective walls and lots of nice stuff to scatter the sound, it won’t be square and will have sloping ceilings and walls. All of these factors will stop reflections building up, interacting with one another and causing acoustic chaos.” Learn how you can create mixes that translate well to a variety of systems with these 10 tips to improve room acoustics.

Headroom, Gain Staging & Clipping in 32-Bit Digital Audio

Vespers, from Warp Academy, covers a crucial topic in this video: 32-bit floating point audio. He discusses the implications of working with 32-bit floating point audio, and how it differs from 24-bit fixed point audio. There are lots of myths floating around the internet about how much headroom you need, and how you’re meant to go about gain staging. Watch this excellent tutorial from Warp Academy to ensure that you’re mixing your tracks and sending them off to your mastering engineer in the best condition possible.

Charles Hoffman is a Mixing and Mastering Engineer at Black Ghost Audio. After graduating from the University of Manitoba with an English degree, Charles completed his education at Icon Collective in Los Angeles, CA.

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