Phil O'Keefe

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• Freelance

  Phil O'Keefe
  

The Most Recent stories by Phil O'Keefe

• Guitar Pedals: Your Studio’s Secret Weapon  July 2007

  While there’s something incredibly cool about the sound of a great guitar plugged straight into a great amp, you can get a lot of other useful tonal colors with some good effects pedals — and if you own a bunch of pedals, you need a ...

• Blumlein Pair Stereo Miking  July 2007

  While working as an electrical engineer for a Bell Labs subsidiary, and later for EMI, Alan Dower Blumlein (1903-1942) had a profound effect on the fields of telecommunications, TV, radar, and audio recording and reproduction. He developed ...

• Mid-Side Recording  July 2007

  Stereo mic techniques are great for capturing and creating a natural, or even a hyper-natural sense of width and space. Probably the two most common techniques are the XY coincident arrangement, and a spaced pair. But the lesser-known ...

• Pro Tools Music Production Toolkit  June 2007

  Pro Tools comes in two basic flavors — the full-blown HD systems and the somewhat limited LE and M-Powered (for use with M-Audio, as opposed to Digidesign hardware) versions. While the LE versions offer many of the features of the more ...

• Movin' In Stereo  June 2007

  I’ve always dug that song — probably because I’m a stereo freak! I love it when things fly around the stereo sound field (that is, as long as it’s musically appropriate). So this month, let’s look into various ways to place sounds within ...

• Solid State Logic Duende  June 2007

  It’s staggering how much you can do natively with a modern computer’s CPU, but even the most powerful systems have limits. For those who cry “more!,” several companies make DSP add-on products (usually PCI cards or FireWire devices) ...

• Long Distance Collaboration  June 2007

  Many project and home studio folks do a lot of their work alone. While this means you don’t have to persuade anyone else of the brilliance of your ideas, the downside is that it’s often the collaborative interaction between musicians ...

• Why Is It So Hard?  June 2007

  Why is it so hard to get tracks that kill? Mixes that scream with emotional impact — music that holds up to the work of the masters of our craft? Experienced pro or newbie neophyte, we all share a desire to improve the sound, relevance, ...

• Welcome to Hell!  June 2007

  You know the deal: There’s a lot of work that still needs to be done as deadlines hang over you like a Sword of Damocles, and you draw ever-closer to impending doom (or a ticked-off client — basically the same thing). What do you do? ...

• Want to Network? Throw a Party!  June 2007

  Want to get the word out about your studio, and network with other local musicians? Hosting a party, “jam night,” or “open house” at your studio can be great PR. But throwing a studio party isn’t quite as simple as just having a few ...