Making Music With Sonar

From Sonar

Revision as of 16:53, 15 September 2006

Information on making music with Cakewalk's Sonar DAW software.

General

Recording

Miking

Vocals

Acoustic Instruments

Electric Instruments

Softsynths / Software Samplers

Hardware Synths

Room treatment

Mixing

After I compiled the Compendium of Mastering Articles and Compendium of Tape Saturation Plugins, I was asked to start a Compendium of Mixing Articles by dcastle. Now that this is a wiki, they will quickly get out of sync, but that means there will be good stuff in both places.

General Articles

• SONAR FAQ — there's no better place to start than our very own FAQ

• SONAR wiki by Scott Sadowsky — the latest place to share tips, advice and other information relevant to Sonar users.

• CakewalkNet Tutorials & Tips — An up to date compendium of internet links

• Tips and Tricks on Getting the Best Mix by Bob Katz — First, read all the articles on this web page!

• The Computer Music Guide to Basic Mixing — The secret to professional sounding mixing is to try, try and try again. But before you get going, make sure you stay on the right track with the Computer Music guide...

• Charles Dye's Hard Disk Life or DigiZine's Mixing Revealed by Charles Dye — not a singular skill at all, but a culmination of a number of individual techniques. Techniques that each on their own didn't make for great mixes, but when added together created huge, dynamic, and powerful ones. Techniques that breathed life into the mix, gave it emotion, and made the artist sound like a star

Specific Articles

• Using EQ & Compressor and Misc. Links by chaz — Here are some links to information that I use in my audio engineering classes at the studio. You should find them to be very informative and helpful

Books

• Sonar 3: Mixing & Mastering by Craig Anderton — This easy-to-read, practical book will improve your arranging, mixing, and mastering skills by showing you how to take full advantage of the powerful features in Sonar 3. In addition to a basic introduction in sound engineering, you’ll learn an astounding array of pro-level tips and tricks that will help you make better-sounding music. Furthermore, the enclosed CD-Rom includes audio examples and more to help enhance the learning experience

• "The Mixing Engineer's Handbook" by Bobby Owsinski — Secrets of the top recording engineers revealed at mixdown! Learn the evolution of mixing, regional mixing styles, the six elements of a mix, rules for arrangements and principles of building your mix! Learn the secrets of EQ and ?magic frequencies? along with adding effects, EQ?ing reverbs, sonic layering of effects, calculating the delay time and much more! This book extensively covers stereo mixing with an expansive chapter on mixing in 5.1 surround. Plus, it includes an incredible third section filled with interviews with the top engineers in the field such as George Massenburg, Allen Sides, Bruce Swedien and over a dozen more!

• "The Art of Mixing" by David Gibson — This colorful book uses extensive visual representations to explain how to create every style of music mix. It's an in-depth exploration into the aesthetics of what makes a great mix in a simple, visual manner. Gibson has mapped out everything that can be done to create various effects in all standard mixes, including details on most styles, from bluegrass to big band, new age to heavy metal, classical to hip-hop, jazz to rap, and alternative rock to techno.

Online Resources

• Recording School Online — Online classes with downloadable video: Digital Effects $49.00, Mixing $68.00, … Mastering $1,500.00 — but I have no idea how good or useful they are.

Mastering

A one-stop list of all the external articles on mastering with emphasis on SONAR (Cakewalk's only mastering tool) from the Compendium of Mastering Articles by dcastle.

Discussions

• "Mastering Tips" — yep

Great Classic Articles

• Bob Katz Digital Domain articles — Bob Katz wrote these articles on digital and analog audio between 1990 and 2002. Much of Bob's book, Mastering Audio contains concepts from these articles. The book is a newly written, holistic work--an organized look at mastering from A to Z. We have retained the older articles here at the website as a public service. As time marches on, we may remove an article from the site if the information has gone out of date.

• Mastering The Mix — So you've got your phat tune down and you've got your audio mix to perfection, but it still doesn't quite have the same sparkle and life as the commercial songs in your CD collection... it's time to master your song

• The Project Studio Handbook Web Links, Articles & Resources on the Internet — This is really out of date and needs to be updated.

• MASTERING by Dominique Bassal — The Practice of Mastering in Electroacoustics, A Guide to Producing Stems

Here is a great article over at iZotope about mastering with their "Ozone" mastering tool, but it covers a lot of good general information also:

• Ozone Mastering Guide — You’ve just finished recording what you think is a pretty good song in your project studio. The playing is good, the recording is clean and the mix is decent. So you burn it to a CD and proudly pop it in your CD player. But when you hear it played after a “commercial” CD, you realize that something is wrong.

Here are some great articles on t.c. electronic primarily about their MASTERING6000 product, but full of useful information about audio and mastering in general:

• "Level Control in Digital Mastering" by Søren H. Nielson & Thomas Lund — Music mastering is becoming a battle for maximum level rather than a quest for audio quality, because counting consecutive samples at OdBFS is not an adequate restriction of level.

• "0DBFS+ Levels In Digital Mastering" by Søren H. Nielson & Thomas Lund — This paper examines the sonic consequences when 0dBFS+ signals are reproduced in typical consumer equipment. The performance of a variety of domestic CD players exposed to such signals are presented and evaluated.

• "The Secret Of The Mastering Engineer" by Bob Katz — Mastering is an art and a science. In this acclaimed booklet, Bob Katz shares good advice about monitoring, metering and processing. About listening to the music and supporting it as the road to Nirvana – from one of the true yogis of our industry.

• "Compression Applications" by Maureen Droney & Howard Massey — A description of compressors and their applications. Practical advice about parameters and how compressors can be used on single and complex sources.

Here is an article in the Universal Audio WebZine describing how to use UAD-1 plugins for mastering, which might be applicable to others:

• Plug-In Power: Michael Romanowski uses UAD-1 Plug-Ins to Master a Song — Pultec Pro EQ→Precision EQ→Precision EQ→Precision Multi-Band→Precision Limiter

Electronic Musician has published some great introductory articles recently

• GOING IT ALONE An excerpt From Master of the Universe — Letting your ears be your guide is the primary point in mastering. The process — the songwriting, the performance, and the mix decisions — is mostly, if not purely, emotional, and objectivity is hard to come by. That is especially true for those of us who are songwriter, performer, and engineer all at once. Mastering sets aside the decisions, compromises, fatigue, joy, and angst that come with the creative process, and evaluates the sound of a project in its entirety.

Mastering Books

• "Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science" by Bob Katz — Mastering Audio explains leading-edge audio concepts in an easy-to-grasp, holistic manner, including an ear-opening investigation of the mysteries of jitter, dither and wordlengths, high sample rates, distortion, headroom, monitor calibration, metering, depth perception, compression and expansion, equipment interconnection and much more. Mastering Audio is for everyone who wants to increase their mastery of digital and analog audio: musicians, producers, A&R, mastering, recording and mixing engineers, and students.

• "Sonar 3: Mixing & Mastering" by Craig Anderton — This easy-to-read, practical book will improve your arranging, mixing, and mastering skills by showing you how to take full advantage of the powerful features in Sonar 3. In addition to a basic introduction in sound engineering, you’ll learn an astounding array of pro-level tips and tricks that will help you make better-sounding music. Furthermore, the enclosed CD-Rom includes audio examples and more to help enhance the learning experience.

• The Mixing Engineer's Handbook by Bobby Owsinski — Secrets of the top recording engineers revealed at mixdown! Learn the evolution of mixing, regional mixing styles, the six elements of a mix, rules for arrangements and principles of building your mix! Learn the secrets of EQ and "magic frequencies" along with adding effects, EQ'ing reverbs, sonic layering of effects, calculating the delay time and much more! This book extensively covers stereo mixing with an expansive chapter on mixing in 5.1 surround. Plus, it includes an incredible third section filled with interviews with the top engineers in the field such as George Massenburg, Allen Sides, Bruce Swedien and over a dozen more!

Links

• Search for mastering articles in the Cakewalk SONAR forums</li>

• CakewalkNet Tutorials & Tips</li>

• Wikipedia Audio Mastering — Steps of the process typically include:
  1. Sequence the recorded audio as it will appear on the final product.</li>
  2. Correct any problems with the audio, such as volume level, tonal balance, or undesireable artifacts.</li>
  3. Transfer the audio to the final master format.</li>

And, if you think that mastering is all about getting the loudest possible sound on your CD, please read The Death of Dynamic Range, which is a brutal exposition of the history of compression on CDs, and a fitting closing article in this compendium.

Pressing / Copying / Distributing

Internet Distribution Sites

• Soundclick