Happy Monday -

A friend of Dan’s, producer/engineer Steve Evetts, lost his entire studio in a 14-alarm fire in New Jersey. Mr Evetts has worked with The Cure, Sepultura, Vanna, Every Time I Die, The Wonder Years, and more. His studio is a complete loss—he’s totally wiped out.

There is a GoFundMe to help him out here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-steve-evetts-rebuild-his-studio. If you can help Steve, please do.

Super producer Jack Douglas died at 80

I don’t even know where to begin trying to encapsulate the career of this brilliant man, who went from writing folk songs for Bobby Kennedy to working as a janitor at the Record Plant to engineering and then producing some of the best rock records ever made. We put together a playlist, but it doesn’t really cover it.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe6ZCJT_4KPna2nw0u9g3sCvJL29O_4hi

Jack Douglas combined engineering chops with superb musicality and an innate sense of how to get the best out of musicians and singers. He brought out the creativity in people. Indeed, the real magic of Jack Douglas was how he worked with people.

“I think the reason why we’ve had so many returns over the years is because the act and the art of making the record is always a positive one. It’s always, “Let’s talk about how we can move this record forward. Let’s see how we can expand our artistic horizons. Let’s talk about what this record is about. Let’s rehearse so we’re in the ballpark when we go into the studio, but let’s leave enough room for improvisation.” All of those things are very important, and it also makes the artist feel like he or she has a collaborator. If you need me to write with you, I’ll write with you. If you don’t, that’s fine. Let me see what your lyrics are like; maybe I can make a suggestion. You don’t need that? That’s fine too. Let’s see what the meaning of this is. Maybe the album should have a darker feel overall, or perhaps it should be brighter. Maybe we should do some songs in between keys.”

I pulled the quote out of a fantastic interview in Tape Op. Well worth the read—you will learn from it. And there’s a kind of part two interview that you can read here. Also completely worth it.

Douglas’ sidekick throughout many of his musical adventures was engineer Jay Messina. The two were so close they finish each other’s sentences.

Rocks

Jack and Jay worked extensively with Aerosmith in the 70s, and made their best albums, Toys in the Attic and Rocks. There’s a ton of videos and written things about these records, how they used sugar packets on Sweet Emotion and how they broke the vibration-slap, and how he took the band to see Young Frankenstein, and that turned into their hit Walk This Way. If you want to know more of that stuff, it’s out there. I’m going to write mainly about one album, Rocks, and one song, Sick as a Dog.

I have a personal affinity for Rocks. I was a dumb kid hanging out with a friend who was doing the overnight in a studio in NYC, and we found a safety copy of a few songs from Rocks in the tape vault. So, we broke all the rules of the studio and put it on and spent a few hours mixing it. Not that it really required any mixing because everything was so superbly recorded all you had to do was bring up the faders and there was the record. And by bring up the faders, I mean bring them up to unity—a straight line across the board. Good lord, those guys were amazing engineers.

Most of Rocks was cut in Boston at Aerosmith’s rehearsal space, A. Wherehouse. Douglas and Messina drove up the Record Plant mobile for the recording (Spectra Sonics console!). The band noodled and collaborated on songs, and once in a final form, they’d cut it live, often with a PA system blaring in their faces as a monitoring system. Two songs were also cut at The Record Plant in New York City, as were the vocals and all the mixing (API console!).

Aerosmith‘s writing on Rocks was absolutely on point, and part of the reason was that everyone in the band was contributing, not just Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. Sick as a Dog was mostly written by bassist Tom Hamilton.

Sick as a Dog

This is a really fun arrangement and production, kinda sneaky in many ways—it sets an expectation and then does something else entirely, which keeps a listener paying attention. A directing teacher in college told me that you want the audience to relax and get comfortable in their seats, and the moment they relax and spread their legs a bit, you kick them in the balls. And you do that all night. That’s what’s going on throughout Rocks.

It begins with a layered bunch of guitars, shimmering and beautiful and for a moment it sounds like we’re starting a ballad. Hamilton was a huge fan of The Byrds. Listen on the left for what sounds like a triangle.

The opening is an interesting juxtaposition to the title. Tom Hamilton wrote most of the lyrics. He said it was about being dope sick, and by 1976, the band’s drug use was excessive.

The band and vocals kick in—the guitars are played by bassist Hamilton (I think on the left) and rhythm guitarist Brad Whitford on the right. Lead guitarist Joe Perry is playing bass! The vocals and the riff work off each other—Aerosmith were masters of this.

I love the vocal production on the verses—the long held note at the start of each phrase is harmonized by two overdubs, panned wide. They drop after about a bar and a half, leaving a stark single vocal in the center. There’s a sense of expansion and contraction to it, like the song goes from wide to dead center. It is very simple and very effective.

For the chorus, the vocals and guitars follow each other as they hammer on the riff. I read a Steven Tyler interview years ago in which he expressed his songwriting philosophy: get to the hook and beat it to death. Listen for two backing vocals over to the right. Sounds like a group vocal on one mic.

There’s a quick break that sounds almost country, complete with a major pentatonic guitar break (Joe Perry overdub?), and then it kicks back into a verse and another chorus.

And another break. For a moment, it sounds like it’s going to be a repeat of the country type thing, but you’ve been set up! It flows into an almost classical harmonized extended minor guitar interlude—three guitars: the two rhythm tracks we’ve been hearing and I guess another Joe Perry overdub. The section is reminiscent of Dream On.

Another verse, but with some minor ear candy—some vocal tricks from Tyler and a fun little bass fill from Joe Perry that sets up a vocal ad lib.

Another chorus—remember the philosophy is to beat the hooks to death, and then the band floats back to the opening riff, this time augmented with a vocal over to the right. I know I’ve often mentioned a principle: diverse in unity, unified in diversity. That’s what’s going on all over this song.

And then it goes to a slow, quiet part. You can hear clearly that the drums are basically mono. I don’t recall how they were tracked on the tape I was playing with, but to my ears now, they’re in mono, with what sounds like a wide panned plate reverb.

You’ll notice there’s no bass. Why?

Because they wanted Joe Perry to play a lead part over the ending vamp. So, he put down the bass and crept over to his guitar rig, while Steven Tyler picked up the bass, which he played during the outro! Listen and you’ll hear it’s a completely different sound because it’s a completely different player.

The band kicks in—it’s the verse part. Another thing to listen for and love: drummer Joey Kramer initially comes in on the high hat and then switches over to a ride after about three and a half beats. I LOVE when drummers get lost and then find themselves. Charlie Watts does this all over the place and it’s so fun to hear it, and to imagine during the playback when someone points out the mistake and the producer says, “No, it’s cool. Leave it.”

There’s a vamp out vocal on the left, and some oddly precise, mechanical-sounding claps on the right. I’m thinking it’s from an early analog drum machine. Whatever — they work wonderfully. Claps are the instrument anyone can play, and I think they always pull the listener into the song.

Joe Perry’s ride-out guitar solo, sounding very Chuck Berry, is also over to the right.

Another quick listening note: there’s only hard left, center, and hard right panning. No 45% left, no 80% right, it’s L C R the entire record.

Rocks, by the way, was released on May 13th, 1976. 50 years of this fantastic album.

Jack Douglas died May 11th.

Beautiful Boy

One last thing to listen to. John Lennon in 1980 was fragile and unsure of himself. He never liked his voice, and was especially insecure about it while working on Double Fantasy. He insisted on doubling everything and adding reverb and effects. Douglas thought the vocals were superb and didn’t need anything, but he acquiesced to Lennon’s wishes. The two were already discussing making another record together, and Jack was hoping to showcase John’s voice without the extra fluff on it. Lennon was murdered three weeks after Double Fantasy was released. Douglas was inconsolable and retreated to his apartment and heroin.

In 2010, Double Fantasy (Stripped Down) was released. Douglas and Messina remixed Double Fantasy without all the effects. Here’s two versions of Beautiful Boy.

Beautiful Boy (full of stuff)

Beautiful Boy (stripped down)

The original vocal has flanging and god knows what on it. The stripped version... what a great vocal.

That’s all for this week. Make great records and have the time of your life in the studio.

Warm regards,
Luke

New Monday is a weekly newsletter I write for Korneff Audio. It’s different every week. Sometimes technical. Sometimes historical. Sometimes hysterical. Always musical.

Korneff Audio

A Techy Geeky Addendum

I received a lot of emails regarding the article I wrote on The High-Pass Filter Controversy. Some of you had questions. Some of you thought the whole thing was nonsense. Some of you thought I could have been more accurate technically.

I taught audio for years at college level—Dan Korneff was one of my students, that is how we met. I wanted my students to understand concepts in a useful way—a way that they could apply in the studio quickly and intuitively, because studio engineering at that time was about going fast. I also found for myself that if I had a more visual or metaphorical notion of how something worked, it helped me to use it in a more creative manner.

That way of teaching has stuck with me, and that’s the way I approach what I write for you all. I’m trying to boil down concepts to something easily understood, and sometimes there’s a level of abstraction applied, or a generalization that is accurate, but it could be more accurate, especially if you want to dig deeper into the concept. If you’re understanding enough of something that you want to learn more, that’s great. If you understand it enough that you’re more competent and sure of yourself in the studio, that’s even better. That is the target I’m aiming for: you getting it in a useful, applicable way.

Regarding the High-Pass Filter Controversy... I could hear issues with pass filters and phase 30 years ago, but not anymore. And 30 years ago I only cared about it if it was a net negative in terms of the music and the record. I cared a lot more about shitty lyrics than I ever cared about phase anomalies in the lows.

Dan can hear all of this stuff, and he approaches it the same: it’s a problem when it’s a problem, and usually it isn’t a problem. But... on plugins and hardware, getting the phase squared away is of a different importance and urgency than on a mix.

It depends not only on what you’re doing, but also who you are. Engineers who hear that stuff actually hear that stuff, and if it’s a problem to them, that is legitimate. If it isn’t an issue to you, god bless and get mixing and put high pass filters all over the place. Make it sound good. There were a bunch of tips on how to make it sound good IF phase issues are causing you problems. Even if you don’t hear an issue, the tips were all good ideas and the more you know the more you grow. It’s all good. And thank you all for writing.

More On High-Pass Filters

I wrote more on this topic for this week. And I will write one more article on it next week and then I’ll move over to something else.

This week: high-pass filters and an in-depth explanation of how phase issues happen—and this is true for a variety of filters and EQs, not just high-pass filters. I also explain ringing and what a digital Minimal-Phase filter is. Click on the link below.

https://korneffaudio.com/more-pass-filtering-and-minimal-phase-filtering/

Next week, the topic is linear-phase filtering.

Haute and Freddy

Pronounced Hot and Freddy, they’re a duo composed of singer/songwriter Michelle Buzz and percussionist/producer Lance Shipp. They popped up on my radar about a year ago and I’ve been following them since, waiting for a major label to snap them up and for an album.

Atlantic signed them in January, and Big Disgrace was released in March. They recorded and produced it themselves in their home studio in LA and some locations in Norway. Freddy (Lance Shipp) did the mixing, and most of the album was written by just the two of them.

The record is what happens when you take theatre kid Haute (Michelle Buzz) and let her loose with a mandate to revive 80s electronic pop à la New Order, Depeche Mode and Dead or Alive, but take it to 11, puleeease. The result is a bonkers, campy assemblage of hooks, attitude and imagination. It’s over the top in nearly all ways, yet it manages to land tons of tight punches. The opening number sounds like it’s from a Broadway musical, but almost immediately it turns into a dance party with killer song after song after song. This is a debut record? It could be a Best Of.

Unlike a lot of pop records these days, there’s nothing R&B about Big Disgrace. The rhythm is straight four on the floor; the emphasis is on melody and chord structure. Nor is Ms. Buzz an R&B singer. She’s more like a new wave goddess, like Lena Lovitch or Martha Davis of the Motels, or Dale Bozzio of Missing Persons... except she’s throwing around a better voice than all of them. She’s instantly distinctive, smart and expressive. Totally charismatic vocally and visually. I think she’s a major talent arriving.

The album is here.

Haute and Freddy also make insane videos. Picture 80s new wave in the Renaissance with cross-dressing. They look like the record sounds. This is so far my favorite album of the year. Fabulous. Some things to watch:

Anyway - that’s it for this week, high tech and high camp!

Warm regards,

Luke

New Monday is a weekly newsletter I write for Korneff Audio. It’s different every week. Sometimes technical. Sometimes historical. Sometimes hysterical. Always musical.

Korneff Audio

We get techy geeky for the next few weeks.

The High Pass Filter Controversy

For some reason, this has been popping up in forums and videos. Evidently, using hi-pass (low-cut) filters, is a bad idea. A big no-no. But how can that be? It’s been a standard tool of the trade since forever? I’ve seen mixes on SSLs and every channel had hi-pass filters lit up.

I wrote an explanation of the problem (technical but clear) and some practical wisdom you can apply to your engineering. Because we want things to sound awesomesauce.

Click here to read --> The High Pass Filter Controversy

British Krautrock?

I hadn’t heard this song in ages. It begins a bit slow and dreamy, with someone hitting a glass jar with a pencil, a washy guitar and an electric piano... then there’s a kick drum that’s so well recorded you can hear the color of the paint job, and then the bass stomps in, it’s SO DAMN GOOD.

Ultravox was a British band from the late 70s, early 80s. They sit somewhere after punk but before New Wave. It’s electronic music, but it’s analog electronic music: real drummers, an actual bassist, and analog synths.

Astradyne was the lead track off their album Vienna. I suppose it is considered these days to be a minor masterpiece. It’s definitely worth a listen.

If you know your Krautrock, Vienna will sound very familiar, and with good reason. It was recorded by the godfather of Krautrock and German electronic music, Conny Plank, at his studio outside of Cologne, Conny’s Studio. Conny was an engineer’s engineer, building his own studio, including his own 56-channel console.

I wrote a bunch on Krautrock a few years ago. There are details on Conny Plank’s equipment, the groups he worked with, and there’s a Krautrock playlist.

If you’ve not done a dive into Krautrock, you should. There’s so much to take for inspiration.

LATCH

This is an acronym for Live, Analog, Trusted, Curated, Human. It’s a framework of thought for how human artists can approach the rising tide of Ai.

I hate the fact that we have to even think about this stuff, but it affects all of us. This article is not strictly about music, because Ai is about way more than music. If it can be turned into numbers, Ai wants to play with it. It’s not a long read, and it is well worth it.

The Entertainment Strategy Guy

One Future of Post-AI Generated Art: Live, Analog, Trusted, Curated, Human

(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occ…

Read more

19 days ago · Entertainment Strategy Guy

The SITRAL

We’ve released an update to our SITRAL Klankfilter 295 equalizer plug-in. There’s now much improved CPU performance—a bunch of you were clamouring for that and we heard you—as well as improvements and bug fixes all over the place.

New Monday is short. Go read The High Pass Filter Controversy.

Warm regards,

Luke

New Monday is a weekly newsletter I write for Korneff Audio. It’s different every week. Sometimes technical. Sometimes historical. Sometimes hysterical. Always musical.

Korneff Audio

Today, 4/20, is the birthday of our Puff Puff mixPass plug-in, which is on sale for 40% off, and the rest of our plug-ins are 20% off, because it’s a party! Go here.

The Puff is one of the plug-ins that both Dan and I use everywhere. You clap it on something, maybe tweak it (often not), and things get louder and more defined. It has weird controls as well as a weird look. What the hell is going on with that thing???

Today, we’re going to look at the birthday boy, and how loudness kinda works in general, but not from a tech-heavy viewpoint.

Me, personally, I often find that technical know-how isn’t as helpful to me creatively as a wider, perhaps more metaphoric view. Perhaps something is lost in translation as the math and decibels move from the nitpicky, procedural left side of my brain to the wandery, dreamy right side. Or maybe it’s that having an intuitive sense of what’s going on is faster in the studio and leads to creativity that’s less doctrinaire and typical.

For today, let’s approach loudness, and the Puff Puff, from the more intuitive position, and tie that into the technical. And you can all write me later and tell me if this is dumb and sucks.

Loudness is Density

Loud sounds are dense sounds. They’re simply more—that’s why they’re loud. A single flute is one level, a whole section of woodwinds is at another level, an entire orchestra is yet another. More is more. More is dense. Lots of food in the fridge? The fridge is dense with food.

It’s a summer night. You’re outside and there’s a steady drone of crickets, cicadas, little frogs—whatever noisy bug-like things happen outside in the summer. Summer bugs individually are quiet, but tons of them all together can get very very loud. A density of bugs.

Then someone sets off a firework—there’s an explosion. That explosion can easily be heard over the bugs, but it dies out quickly, leaving the buggy guys, which drone on across time all night. If we set off a lot of fireworks across time, we increase the density of explosions, then we get an even louder loudness. Loudness is an expression of density.

Dynamic Range and Density

Take those crickets and that single explosion and plot them on a dynamic range diagram, with decibels along the Y axis, time across the X, and the point at which our recording equipment—the microphone or the preamp or the converter, or our ears—overload and break up. We’ll put the explosion right near the top, right below clipping. That’s the loudest peak. The crickets are much lower. It’s dense down low, less dense up top.

​Let’s move that low density up.​

If we compress—setting the threshold to push down that explosion but not hit the crickets, then we use make-up gain to turn the entire thing up and move those crickets towards that clipping point, the density of what’s audible increases.

But there are even quieter things underneath the crickets. Perhaps the crickets are farting.​

We can apply another layer of compression, push those chirps down, and then bring the whole thing up again, again increasing density and loudness.​

This is how peak limiting and compression make things louder. We squash the dynamic range, increasing its density, and raise it up. The signal gets “thicker” and more dense.

There’s a technical measurement that tracks this well: RMS, which is essentially the average level over time. A peak measurement tracks that explosion. RMS captures the crickets. Humans move across time, so RMS is much closer to how we actually perceive loudness. LUFS — which is the unit everyone chases these days — takes this further by futzing with the measurement by taking into account how the average human ear hears. And that leads us to our next topic...

Frequency Response and Density

Our ears are designed for maximum intelligibility of speech. Specifically, our ears are tuned to be sensitive to consonants. Consonants break up the steady stream of air that vowels produce. A quick, silent demonstration of the power of consonants.

What the hell does this mean: oe auio ae e ooe ui ee?

No clue, right? Sounds like some guy with a face full of novocaine hitting on a dental hygienist. Actually, they’re saying “Korneff Audio makes the coolest plug-ins ever.” Try it as a pickup line the next time you’re at the dentist and let me know how it works.

Consonants carry their energy in the midrange, from around 1kHz up to 4kHz, and that’s where our hearing is most sensitive.​

Our hearing is less sensitive to the lows and highs, essentially rolling them off like a ragged mid-band pass filter. But our hearing is also adaptive. Scientists mapped this out: as volume increases, our hearing flattens, and we perceive more lows and highs. Our hearing is flattest around 80dB SPL, and there’s a lot of mixing advice that 80dB SPL is where you should peg your monitors. Both Dan and I mix lower than that, but the idea behind it is sound.​

From a density standpoint, this makes sense — as volume goes up, more frequencies become audible. We’re increasing density. Our ears interpret hearing more bass and more highs as sounding louder, which is what the loudness button on a stereo does, and what the smile curve on heavy guitars and loud records is doing. It’s a loudness hack.

Time and Density

A solo voice in a dry room is quiet compared to the same voice in a church. The acoustics of the church help the voice bounce off the walls and return to listeners as reverb. In essence, that single voice becomes a choir. Put an actual choir in the room and it can get incredibly loud. Cathedrals and concert halls are basically designed to be amplifiers, and they do this by “repeating” the sounds in the space.​

Delays and reverb increase density over time. Depending on delay times, there can be phase cancellation, which can reduce density, generally more affecting frequency response than overall loudness.

Harmonic Density

More average level is more dense. More lows and highs is more dense. Reverb and delay are more dense.

What if we had all of the frequencies happening at once? Everything from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. Would that be loud? Hell yes! This is basically what White Noise and Pink Noise are, with Pink generally sounding the loudest to us because its distribution of energy results in it having more low end than white noise (and more low end sounds louder to humans, remember?) Put equal-level music and pink noise through a sound system and the pink noise will sound louder, because there are no gaps in the frequency response of the signal. Music, to sound musical and not like noise, has to have some sort of pattern to the distribution of frequencies. It can’t just have everything all the time.

A note played by an instrument or sung by a voice has overtones—harmonics. The particular arrangement of harmonics are a large part of the timbre—the distinctive sound—of an instrument. Guitars have a set of “guitarist” harmonics. Individual singers each have their own sets of harmonics. It’s how we tell them apart from each other. The harmonic structure also reinforces a sense of pitch. Pink noise is noise because it is all pitches at once, whereas an A or a G has a particular pattern to the frequencies involved, which to our ear sounds like a specific pitch, or a collection of pitches—a chord.

Instruments with more harmonics tend to be louder, and this makes sense if we think in terms of density, and if we think in terms of the density of sounds, such as Pink or White Noise. Drums are very noisy—lots of harmonics and most of them mathematically unrelated—and essentially pitchless.​

Is it obvious that we can make something louder by increasing its harmonic density?

This is how the Puff Puff mixPass works.

The Puff Puff adds Harmonic Density

When a signal is fed into the Puff, it generates harmonics and overtones that are mathematically related to it, and this makes the signal apparently louder. This doesn’t move the meter all that much, because harmonics are typically at a very low level, but our ear can detect this added density and perceives it as sounding louder.​

The Puff Puff also adds some apparent presence and brightness, because added harmonics go up in pitch, which is why if you really saturate and distort a signal, it gets buzzy and thin-sounding, because a ton of bright stuff is added.

The Puff Puff can be thought of as a very controlled, strategic saturator. It is adding saturation not by clipping the waveform, but by reshaping the waveform according to a proprietary algorithm. The result is that the Puff will add loudness and clarity, not something our ear might tag as saturation and distortion, although at some settings the Puff can play some distortion games.

When to use EQ, Compression, Reverb or the Puff

Compression and Limiting: These effects change the microdynamics, or the envelope, of whatever you put them on. Depending on the settings, you can lose or accentuate transients, or lose or accentuate the quiet part of a sound. Do you want to do that? Do you want to make a vocal more breathy? Do you want a snare to pop and rattle more? Does the keyboard part need to be louder, but smoother?

If you’re thinking in terms of changing the sound, or changing the sound AND the loudness, you’re in compressor usage territory. If you’re thinking, “This needs to be louder,” you’re thinking in Puff territory.

EQ: Compression changes the dynamics of a signal; EQ changes the frequency balance of a signal. If you want to hear more or less of a range of an instrument—if you’re saying to yourself, “This kick has no thump,” or “These cymbals need sizzle,” that’s EQ thinking. If you’re thinking, “I need more lead vocal,” that’s Puff thinking. Remember, at its most basic function, the Puff just makes things seem louder.

Reverb and Delay: These effects tend to add volume in an architectural setting, but on recordings, they’re more about space and mood. Seldom have I thought, “This needs to be louder, let’s add reverb.”

I heard this the other day. It’s a typical use of delay, but in this case it is making that intro guitar part jump out a little bit—a little more interesting and a little bit louder.

Puff on reverb will make the reverb seem louder and more present... just a quick thought.

Puff Thinking

If something needs to be louder, and the fader doesn’t fix it, the Puff usually will.

Why would the Puff work better than the fader? Because the fader is adjusting level AND loudness, and the Puff is just affecting loudness.

Why would it work better than EQ in some applications? Because the Puff doesn’t change the frequency balance of a sound.

Why would it work better than dynamics—compressors/limiters—in some applications? Because the Puff doesn’t change the microdynamics, the envelope of a sound. It doesn’t affect transients or sustain and release.

Try this: bring up a lead vocal, remove most of the processing on it and add the Puff. Just by using DYNAMICS and AMOUNT, can you get that vocal to sit correctly?

I use the Puff as a testing tool on mixes. I put it on various tracks and experiment with where they are in the mix. Often I find I’m using saturation and EQ or compression to adjust levels, and the Puff is the better solution.

A touch of Puff brings kicks out. Push SONIC INTEGRITY towards FUZZ to bring out some of the highs. Unlike using EQ or compression, the Puff doesn’t change the basic sound of the kick. I have found often that I am screwing around with EQ and dynamics on a perfectly fine sound, and I just need a touch of the Puff on it.

PUFF Applications

Obviously, stick the Puff Puff on the mix bus and everything suddenly sounds louder and more present. To take it a step further...

Rough Mix Master

You always end up making rough mixes for clients, or even for yourself, to listen to in the car, at home, etc. You already might have a bunch of stuff on your 2-bus, and that’s cool. I have the Puff Puff sitting on mine all the time, set up roughly like this:​

The Output Clipper is a True Peak limiter/clipper, and that is a really useful thing. I’ll get more into true peak soon, but for now, all you need to do is set the ceiling down 1 dB if the mix isn’t particularly heavy or loud, and maybe 2 dB if it is. Then turn up GAIN while listening and watching the Output Meter to the right. The top one or two LEDs shouldn’t light up—that’s the CEILING setting doing its job. You can add gain and it will eventually distort, but it won’t go over that CEILING setting. This sounds LOUD but not compressed, and use your ear when it comes to distortion. You might like it!

If you want it even louder, consider getting an El Juan Limiter and putting that before the Puff Puff. But for something quick, I just use the Puff. It’s in my template always as the last thing on the 2-bus, left in bypass until I need it.

Just so you know, the Puff Puff is the last thing on Dan Korneff’s mix bus. That is his final clipper and the last processor on his mix bus chain.

Use Two of Them

This is a Dan trick. If it sounds good with one, add another and it sounds even better. This is especially true with the Puff. Add one, then add another. We usually just use the default preset when doing this. Sometimes we tweak the second instance a bit—usually lessening the effect. Try it. Dan always has great tricks.

As a Less Boringizer

Sometimes a part needs a little something to make it more interesting. Just a little something. Not delay, not modulation... just something. Those moments when you say to yourself, “What would Tchad Blake do?”

Consider adding the Puff and messing with the SONIC INTEGRITY controls. You can get all sorts of otherworldly radio transmissions from outer space garbles and distortion. You can kind of use the AMOUNT control as a DRY/WET blend. Not exactly, but kind of.​

Level Matching

If you’re doing live gigs with backing tracks, or perhaps sequencing a bunch of songs mixed at different times or by different people, and the volume is all over the place, use the Puff to even things out. You can do this with faders, but often fader differences change the overall output level, especially if the songs are already compressed, and you also don’t want to automate the channels or the output master fader. You could compress the output, but that results in changes to the dynamics of individual songs and inconsistent results depending on how compressed a song might be feeding into that final compressor.

Instead, put each separate song mix in your DAW on a separate channel, slap a Puff on each insert, and then even out the levels by ear, adjusting DYNAMICS and AMOUNT.

This also works well to even out audio on video reels, and background music and sound effects of videos that are being edited.

Your Ideas and Uses

I’m sure you all have usage ideas. If you’re doing something interesting or weird with the Puff, or you have an application for it in which it works great, please send it to me and I’ll push things out to the rest of you guys as we celebrate the Puff Puff mixPass this week.

In the meantime, even if you don’t buy a Puff, download a Puff Puff demo and play with it, and some of what I write about tomorrow will make more sense.

Warm regards,
Luke

New Monday is a weekly newsletter I write for Korneff Audio. It’s different every week. Sometimes technical. Sometimes historical. Sometimes hysterical. Always musical.

Korneff Audio

My friend, Scott, was walking on the sidewalk, about to sip a latte, when a sports car jumped the curb and hit him going 50 miles an hour. And Scott’s been in the hospital. The good news is that he’ll make a full recovery. But it will take months. Scott’s a big fan of New Monday, but he can’t read or look at a screen because he gets headaches. So for Scott, here’s a spoken word New Monday. You are all welcome to listen to it at the link below. It’s about 15 minutes long. I’m going to make this an ongoing thing. It has been requested, and I think I’ve worked out most of the kinks. And I have my friend Scott and his recovery for motivation.

https://soundcloud.com/korneff-audio/new-monday-113-tricky-taxes/s-hEPfVhYNYAE?si=65ff5470a13b4ef28b605875c72892a9&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

It’s tax season in the US. The obvious song to talk about is Taxman, by The Beatles, but I already wrote about that. Something different...

Taxman, Mr Thief

Written by guitarist Rick Nielsen, mentioning The Beatles in a verse and quoting the George Harrison song loosely—the lyrics in the chorus alternate between “Taxman, Mr Heath” and “Taxman, Mr Thief” and at any rate, Cheap Trick has never been subtle about their debt to the boys from Liverpool.

The boys from Illinois worked for a few weeks in Wisconsin with producer Jack Douglas before cutting their debut album in 1977 at The Record Plant in New York City. Jack Douglas was really a superproducer, especially in the 70s. He started as an engineer (John Lennon’s Imagine album), produced the clutch of great Aerosmith records (Get Your Wings, Toys in the Attic, Rocks and Draw the Line), did The New York Dolls, Patti Smith, John Lennon’s Double Fantasy.

Jack Douglas discovered Cheap Trick in Wisconsin, and got them signed to a major label. He loved the band and recorded them raw and live in the studio to 24-track tape. The album was engineered by superengineer Jay Messina. The pair also mixed Cheap Trick at Budokan, the album that broke them wide open into the world.

At Budokan

At Budokan was actually recorded in Osaka to 24-tracks, and there were a bunch of issues, like a dead snare mic, almost no kick and all sorts of guitar issues. The snare was beefed up by routing the drums to a speaker placed on a snare drum and re-recording it, triggering a test tone oscillator to pump up the kick, and re-amping the guitars in the studio.

At Budokan was a huge hit, but the recordings...

There’s a conspiracy theory/controversy with At Budokan, that the band built it in the studio and that it isn’t live at all. Really? It sounds like a mess to me. You can hear dropped sticks, strange coloration that sounds like speaker cabinet resonances, and, of course, drums that get squelched when the band comes in or the crowd screams. But... on the big song, I Want You to Want Me, the drums are a lot better. And while clearly Rick Nielsen’s guitar track is on the left, there does appear to be an overdub over to the right, although it could be singer Robin Zander, who can definitely play.

Whatever. Cheap Trick was excellent live. Here’s a version of Taxman, Mr Thief recorded in 1977 in LA using the Record Plant mobile. It’s a good capture of a fantastic live band. Love the drums on this. Check out the variations in tempo at the top as the various musicians come in.

A Taxing Soundtrack

We made a tax season playlist for you. Turns out there are a lot of songs involving taxes, from Gene Autry in 1942 to Joni Mitchell and Primus! Kudos to VV for curating one of our best playlists, full of songs to expand out your library of ideas.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe6ZCJT_4KPkoYdgXw2NhcjUpmrFimN4C&si=7Nfw5oKOY0QKOLTO

Brain Up

I try to keep up with the music biz even though most of the news makes me feel ill. A couple of quick things:

Ted Gioia is a music critic and historian who’s one of my favorite cultural commentators. He published a piece on where it appears music and art are headed. It’s a bit depressing.

The Honest Broker

Four Steps to Hell

Smart people have recently asked: What is the aesthetic vision of the 21st century? What are the stylistic markers of our time? What are the core values driving the creative process? What is our zeitgeist…

Read more

2 months ago · 801 likes · 165 comments · Ted Gioia

Here’s an in-depth profile of Sam Altman by Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker. Mr. Altman does not fare well. Even his friends think he’s a liar. What is so interesting about this whole thing is that Ronan Farrow, as a journalist, is a known quantity. He’s thorough in his research and thoroughly dangerous. When he goes after someone or something, heads tumble:

Harvey Weinstein sexual assault allegations — Pulitzer Prize winner, helped launch #MeToo

NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman — assault allegations by four women; he resigned within hours of publication

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves — harassment and intimidation allegations

Brett Kavanaugh — additional sexual misconduct allegation (with Jane Mayer) during his Supreme Court confirmation

Donald Trump’s “catch and kill” arrangement with the National Enquirer (AMI) — figured into his criminal indictment

Britney Spears conservatorship abuses — followed by resignations of her attorney and manager

It shows tremendously poor judgement or a misguided belief in some strange superpower that Sam Altman would agree to let Ronan Farrow rummage around in the junk drawer of his life. This is worth a read. If you have a New Yorker subscription, you’re in with no problem. If you don’t, sometimes you can read it and sometimes it is gated.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may-control-our-future-can-he-be-trusted

A basic summation: the dude lies about everything and then lies about the lying. And this is the guy we want in charge of some of the most transformative and dangerous technology that’s ever been?

Really creepy animated cover image, by the way... made with Ai of course.

We need something positive to end on. I’m thinking of all the great songs Rick Nielsen wrote—he is one of rock music’s most unheralded composers—and of course, Surrender comes to mind. And it is appropriate, with all the changes in the world going on, that we have to accept some of it, but we can’t ever give ourselves away.

Cheap Trick live at Daryl’s house.

Oh my. This song is so good it makes me cry. Have a great week.

Warm warm regards,

Luke

New Monday is a weekly newsletter I write for Korneff Audio. It’s different every week. Sometimes technical. Sometimes historical. Sometimes hysterical. Always musical.

Korneff Audio

Did you all get your free Power Grid Disruptor plug-in? Get it before it’s gone. Yes, it’s an April Fools’ Day joke but it’s also real and works. And we will probably develop it into something more full-featured. If you’ve got feedback on it, email us.

This week... I confess this is a bit of a journey down a series of connected rabbit holes. I gotta say... I love when one song opens up a path through...

The Cover Forest

I hate gyms, mainly because of the loud music that’s generally ass, and also because lifting and moving things that are, at the end of the day, back exactly where they started seems a waste of time. Not that I would enjoy manually transporting rocks around the neighborhood more, but somewhere in between the gym and boulder movement is using a VR headset and an app called Supernatural. It plays music and I hit virtual ball things with virtual bats. Someone gets a music performance royalty, I burn calories. A cool game idea would be re-enacting scenes from gangster movies involving baseball bats, or maybe not.

The other day, I’m whacking heads and the song is The Final Countdown—Europe’s 1986 smash hit.

Swedish Hair Metal

1986. You couldn’t escape this song, the video, or the members of Europe politely headbanging. I was ok when Grunge put a knife in the spandex belly of Hair Metal. It was dopey stuff, but it had a gentle innocence about it. Alice in Chains was trying to kick a habit; Europe was leaving for Venus... Venus... The Final Countdown was a good song and a huge hit: number one in 25 countries. And there was no denying Europe as a band could really play, and singer/main songwriter Joey Tempest could really sing.

I knew every note and nuance of this song, and I immediately noticed that I wasn’t hearing the original recording. Yes, Joey Tempest singing, but not 23-year-old Joey, more like 62-year-old Rolf Larsson (his real name). Still a powerful voice, but tearing on top, pulling on the throat, straining. Young Joey was effortless. Rolf might need to sit for a bit after a particularly good take.

Europe recut the song in 2016, probably for licensing purposes due to some record label selfishness. It’s neither as good a recording nor a performance as the original. They lowered the key.

The 2016 recut:

The 1986 original:

Holy hell, that guy could sing. This was cut pre-autotune: he had to hit those notes himself, no Melodyne training wheels.

I hate when bands re-record classics. It’s a “cover” that never measures up to the original. Rarely does a better recording beat out a better performance. There is a moment to a song cut basically live in the studio by a bunch of excited kids. That moment isn’t caught by Sven doing his guitar part as an overdub in his home studio 40 years later.

In the US, Europe came and went. We don’t wonder about the guys in the band; we assume they’re now all working at IKEA. No. They’re still selling records, mainly in Sweden and Japan. Europe has had a wonderful career. Still touring. Still wearing leather. Still excellent players.

Mr Tempest also puts out solo records. I listened through for something interesting—I’m always looking for ideas to steal. Basically, most of it is Swedish Bon Jovi, but this one.... this is really good. Try to anticipate where the chords are going.

That’s a gem of a song. Someone should cover it. Wet Leg should cover it.

Speaking of Bon Jovi and covers, Supernatural also fed me this piece of crap. I couldn’t get past the first chorus.

I don’t mind Bon Jovi. Again, great players and basically harmless. The video for Wanted: Dead or Alive might try to portray them as gunslingers, but really they were a bunch of horny toads drinking and banging their way across the US. But they dropped the ball on this cover of a fantastic, cornerstone song of the 1970s.

The boys from New Jersey fumbled it on the groove. The hook of The Boys Are Back in Town is the upbeat shuffle groove. Thin Lizzy GROOVED. Bon Jovi tends to thud along like they’re swimming through a pool of mayo or cottage cheese. It was cut in 1989 for a compilation album of covers, Stairway to Heaven / Highway to Hell, a collection of songs made famous by musicians who died of addiction. Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy died from addiction complications in 1986.

Here’s the Thin Lizzy original—so much better. A deep listen to Thin Lizzy is recommended.

Reinvent It

I think if you’re going to cover a song, you should reinvent it. Maybe like this?

Good lord! That fuckin’ ROCKS! This is a brilliant cover. If you’d not heard the original, you’d think it was the product of this particular band, School of Fish. They maintain a bit of the exotic melodicism of the George Michael original, but imbue it with their own thing. This should have been a single.

School of Fish had a pretty big minor hit, 3 Strange Days. A great song. Great guitar sounds. Clearly a drum machine—an Alesis HR-16 to my ear. It was a game changer because it sounded great, was easy to use, and it was cheap. I had one and loved it. It’s all over recordings from the late 80s and 90s. Listen for it here:

Shine was an 8-track demo that managed to get released. The song is great, the recording is a mess, God, I love it.

This is REALLY an awful recording. It’s amazing that it made the radio and hit #4 in the top 40. Collective Soul was basically a guy named Ed Roland, a songwriter and an accomplished audio engineer. He and some buddies made a demo that was released as an album, Hints, Allegations and Things Left Unsaid. Shine is easily the worst recording on the record. The distinctive “YEAH” was sung through a toilet paper tube. You should try this. Works great on guitars, too. Stick an SM57 down a tube and put the tube in front of an amp. Killer riff. Killer guitar solo by Ross Childress.

An unlikely cover of Shine won Dolly Parton a Best Female Country Vocal Grammy:

Perfect Day

This one... Al Green singing Lou Reed’s Perfect Day. Al Green released it in 2023. Singer Raye, from last week, did a background vocal on it. She’s so mixed back you can’t hear her. But now that Raye is big hot sauce, it’s been remixed—her vocals replaced Reverend Al’s in the second verse—and it was released in January 2026.

It seems obvious that soul singers would interpret Perfect Day as a love song, framing it as what it appears to be: a beautiful day spent by two lovers.

Lou Reed, in interviews, claims the song was about a nice day he had with his wife at the time, I dunno. Lou Reed isn’t that nice, nor is he that simple. Lou Reed is like Dan’s dog Lilly, always looking for someone to bite. The narrator in the song is some lonely dude fantasizing about something that never happened. He’s a creep, a stalker. The ending vamp, “You’re gonna reap just what you sow,” is a threat.

Listen to the original:

Piano and string arrangement by the late great Mick Ronson. By the way, this was cut at Trident Studios on a Sound Techniques A-Range console... our channel strip is coming, my friends, it’s coming...

Angine de Poitrine

I wrote about this avant-weird microtonal polyrhythmic duo from Quebec back in November. They’ve since BLOWN UP, touring Europe and now the US. They made The NY Times two days ago.

There are tons of videos of these guys now. This one is my favorite, starting off with a nod to perhaps Discipline era King Crimson and then turning into a disco nightmare. These guys are dynamite.

Again, get your Power Grid Disruptor plug-in. Have a great week. Get your butt in the studio.

Warm regards,

Luke

New Monday is a weekly newsletter I write for Korneff Audio. It’s different every week. Sometimes technical. Sometimes historical. Sometimes hysterical. Always musical.

Korneff Audio

A bunch of you wrote in with ideas—good ideas. Mucho thank you! I’m always interested in thinking about thinking—metacognition or whatever one might call it. At the end of this NM, I’ll address a thought one of you sent me.

Here we go.

This Music May Contain Hope

This sprawling, flawed, 90 minute epic album by British pop singer Raye was released a few days ago. This is quite a record—really an achievement and worth a listen.

Raye is tossing around a heavyweight voice, with a range and power that is often wasted. On more jazz-inflected numbers, she channels singers from Ella to Amy, and her chops and imagination become evident. But often melodies are more about rhythms on one note—very contemporary, yes, but kinda boring compared to things like this:

Utterly insane! Spoken word! The Andrews Sisters! A nod to Hall and Oates! Check out the little percussion and ear candy. I love this one too:

Ya gotta love a title like The WhatsApp Shakespeare, which features mucho fun wordsmithing, but the voice seems wasted. It’s probably me: I’m out of the target market.

There are so many ideas on this record, so many styles and moments. It’s full of cinematic arrangements. She collaborates with Hans Zimmer at one point. Orchestras are involved, in addition to a jazz combo, and tons of musicians and engineers and producers and cowriters. Most of whom she mentions by name in a verbal credit roll at the end of the album.

Listening to her speak, enthusiastic and grateful, makes me wonder why they compressed the living life out of her voice. Why compress happiness, especially when there’s a lot of acoustic separation over the background? Throughout the record, the voice has the dynamic range of a repressed yet pissed-off Uber driver most of the time, even when quiet. Why? Why do we have to perfectly hear every note? Why does everything have to be the same loudness? In the mix, why can’t one thing mask something else? Why can’t we kind of lose the snare drum a little?

But Not Micro Dynamics

Why are we throwing out dynamics as an expressive element? Not the dynamics of a song moving from section to section, but the dynamics of the melody line? The inner dynamics of a voice or a keyboard part or a bassline. Little felt things that aren’t quite heard, like a whisper tucked under the rising tides of passengers’ chatter on a train.

Here’s Keith Richards stumbling through a vocal, wandering around the mic like a drunk in an alley. Which might explain the whole thing, but there’s something wonderful about it.

Another classic from Sunset Sound, mixed on the Sound Techniques A-Range. Our channel strip is a few weeks away. And if Beggars Banquet era Stones is too big a distance, the next link is for one of the biggest R&B hits of all time. Listen to that vocal rise and fall...

Less Expression or...?

Maybe it’s perfectionism. Now that we gots digital tweezers to pluck and groom the eyebrows of our vocal lines, let’s do that. And the drums, too. Screw, let’s fix EVERYTHING until records sound like facelifts. The Beatles could use a remix. Michelangelo’s David should have a bigger dick, don’t you think? And his nose is too big.

Or maybe we can blame it on Social Media, and a generation or two of humans raised publicly, surrounded by cameras and filters, comments and likes. Has everyone become freshmen at their first school dance? Do we have school dances anymore, or is that too cringe?

Speaking of social media, this popped up. It’s about Voice Acting, but it makes sense in a larger context regarding the cultural policing of emotional expression.

Might it turn out that ridiculous facial expressions are somewhat essential? Judge for yourself.

Her’s

Speaking of expressive bodies and faces, these guys:

What Once Was was a minor hit.

Her’s was two guys, singer/guitarist Stephen Fitzpatrick and bassist Audun Laading. They met at music school in Liverpool and Paul McCartney handed them their degrees upon graduation. The lightness of the music disguised the instrumental chops—these are not easy songs to play live and sing.

There’s a transcendent quality to the guys, not in the lyrics or music, but in the transcending of limitations. Singer Fitzpatrick had an almost monotonous voice, restricted to a wobbly low baritone and a yelpy upper end. But there’s something wonderful about it, especially when combined with the range of styles they plundered and poured into their songs.

Read the top comment for the backstory on this song. It’s a little lesson in happenstance and creativity.

On March 27th, 2019, while touring in a van in support of their first album, Stephen and Audun were killed instantly, hit head on by a speeding drunk driver on a highway in Arizona. Bleak.

WOW

We had a sale on our WOW Thing. If any of you missed it, send me a message and I’ll cut you in on the savings action. Or, tell ya what, here’s a New Monday Only coupon code good for 20% of any and everything.

NMWOW20

It expires on Friday night at 11:59pm (that’s 23:59 EST for the exacting). Because I don’t want to end this on such a bleak note.

Here’s a video I did on the WOW Thing. It does a lot more than just big guitars.

Letters

From last week, Tom wrote this: Hey there! Many (or most?) of the composers I know (myself included) feel like the good stuff comes from beyond the brain. I always think about it as a door that I can open if I happen to be in the right headspace. When that door opens sometimes entire pieces of music just show up.

Absolutely. I ended up writing close to 900 words on this. I’ve written a couple of longer answers to people, and not just in music. I’ve started compiling them on my Substack, in a section called Dear Bang Head on Wall. I have even more that I need to publish.

My answer starts like this:

Hi Tom—

I hear what you’re saying about ideas and creativity coming from outside of us. Not from leftovers in the fridge, but more from DoorDash. Like, who the hell ordered this?

Find the rest here.

Y’all rock. Have a great week.

Warm regards,

Luke

New Monday is a weekly newsletter I write for Korneff Audio. It’s different every week. Sometimes technical. Sometimes historical. Sometimes hysterical. Always musical.

Korneff Audio