Straight answers about making records.
Mixing, mastering, vocals, stems and the rights questions nobody answers straight. Written for people who make music, not for people who make plugins.
- Mixing6 min read
How to combine a dry vocal with an existing backing track
Keep the right vocal, remove the old demo singer, align the parts and export one complete song. A practical workflow for replacing a vocal.
- Mixing5 min read
Write a music production brief that survives the next session
Define the performance to preserve, the arrangement to build and the result to deliver. A useful brief for working with an AI music producer.
- Mastering5 min read
Check your final mix before you release it
A practical final-export check: source identity, missing parts, timing, vocal artifacts, peaks, silence and the end of the song.
- Mastering4 min read
What LUFS should you master to in 2026?
Choose loudness for the music and its destination. Understand playback normalization, true-peak headroom and why a meter cannot judge a finished master.
- Rights4 min read
Who owns AI-generated music?
Separate your rights in recordings, generation-provider permissions and copyright in human contributions before distributing AI-assisted music.
- Stems5 min read
How stem separation actually works
Pulling vocals, drums and bass out of a finished mix is not filtering — it is a neural network reconstructing each source. What that means for the quality you get back.
- Vocals5 min read
Why tuned vocals sound robotic, and how to avoid it
The chipmunk effect has a specific cause: formant shifting. What formants are, why naive pitch correction destroys them, and what to do about it.