Gear & Tech Tips
#Gear & Tech Tips
Modulation 101: A Guide to Vibrato, Phasers, Flangers and Chorus
Listen to the opening riff of Heart’s iconic single, Barracuda: the first thing to hit is the heavy overdrive. It rumbles with the intensity of a buffalo stampede. Then a sweeping, whooshing effect that elevates the entire riff, taking the opening to a whole new level. This psychedelic effect that… Read more
#Gear & Tech Tips
Your Guide to Recording at Home. Fast.
If you’ve been to a home studio or a professional recording studio, you’ll have seen that recording musical instruments is serious business. From the clusters of cables and fancy equipment, to the expensive soundproofing which surrounds you – you might decide to leave recording to the pros. But thankfully, recording… Read more
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Enter the World of Virtual Pedalboards and Amps
Musicians, whether professional or hobbyist, can spend thousands of dollars hunting down the perfect sound. Amplifiers that cost thousands, a never-ending cycle of effect pedals – it can become an addictive, endless, expensive journey. But it's also part of the joy: finding and creating your dream rig. So when a… Read more
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Hollow Bodies: Why We Love Them
Joe Pass, Chet Atkins, Kenny Burrel, Barney Kessel, Wes Montgomery, Scotty Moore. They all found their sounds and made their names with hollow bodied guitars. The big, warm, resonant sound produced by hollow bodied guitars is unmistakable, and its distinct characteristic is what draws many players to it. There is… Read more
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Playing Live with your Acoustic Guitar: The Tools You’ll Need
From the smallest of gigs to the grandest of stages... today you’ll find the acoustic guitar player comfortably at home. But this wasn't always the case. For an acoustic instrument to be heard by a larger audience, it had to be amplified. Modern technology has given us plenty of solutions, with… Read more
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Setting up a Pedalboard: Pedal Order Explained
Getting a concrete answer to the question “what’s the correct way to arrange your pedal signal chain?” is tough and with soooooo many pedal products on the market, it can often be difficult to even know where to start with a signal chain. Even the large pedal companies have difficulty… Read more
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Picking Out Your First Acoustic Guitar
How a guitar conjures a whirlwind of emotions with just six strings is just part of its allure. The rest of it results from delayed gratification - it take weeks and sometimes months to develop the finger strength and muscle memory to play your first song, and even longer to… Read more
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Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up Your Home Studio
Prince’s first album “For You” was produced, arranged, composed, and performed all by Prince alone. He played all 27 instruments, including an awe-inspiring 46 vocal lines layered into the opening track. Thanks to leaps ahead in technology, taking on such a task today is a whole lot simpler, and… Read more
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What is Mastering?
You may have heard the term ‘Mastering’ before. Here on the Swee Lee blog, we're going to discuss the art of Mastering, what it is and how you can use it as an artist. What is Mastering? Mastering takes an audio mix and brings it to distribution-quality. It’s the final step… Read more