Cape Audio College Open Day

It’s time for another Open Day at Cape Audio College, a day for all parents and prospective students, as well as any other interested party’s, to come and visit our amazing institution and see what we have to offer. Read more »

Isochronous at Cape Audio College

Isochronality

This last Saturday, the 19th of March, Cape Audio College was graced with the soft, rhythmic melodies of Isochronous and their “icy” re-take on the track ‘The Silence’. Organized by one of our students for his band recording, we let the students come in on the weekend, seeing it was one of South Africas best up and comming bands, who also happen to be bassed in Pretoria. We were all quite surprised when a producer the band had been chatting to pitched up out of no where to help re-produce the single, even more surprising was that it was Jaime Sandoval, the Berkley Music School graduate from Chile! We end this article with some feedback from Isochronous through a little post studio interview. Read more »

Calling all audio people!

The forum is up and running! But its a little empty at the moment. We need YOU to get involved. Join the forum by registering. Add a new topic and discuss audio with our community. You might learn something. If you have a question about anything audio related simply go to the forum, register, find the section that relates to your topic or question and start posting questions, info, cool stuff you have found. You can even get involved in answering other peoples questions. Its great fun and informative too. Go on give it a bash. With your help we can turn the capeaudioforum into SA’s best audio related community.

Go there now – Click here

The Forum is ready and waiting!

Ok guys! The Forum has officially been launched. So get cracking and sign up! There will be a wealth of info available including discussion forums, student resources, techniques, reviews and more. Dont waste any time! Click on the link below to go there.

Click here to access the forum

13 tips for improving your mixes

Before I get started I just want to reinforce something – sometimes a reduction in parameters actually generates more creativity. Being aware of a set of limitations, or guidelines, can actually allow you much more creative control over your final mix. This could mean limiting the amount of effects that you allow yourself to use, or a more obvious one is to only use a particular set of effects that suits the genre or style. If you have the permission to do it, perhaps editing tracks or even muting/removing “surplus” instrumentation or vocal is the first step.

Approach-wise, ideally you want all aspects of a song to reinforce together and create a stronger impact, and if you aren’t aware of what you’re doing, it’s very possible (in fact more common than you think) to get a generally nice balance of instruments that somehow doesn’t “gel”. You can hear everything, but it lacks the emotional impact.

So here’s some ideas to think about next time you’re mixing a song. There are certainly many more ideas and concepts to experiment with than just this list, but I stopped myself before the post became a novel. Read more »

Pro Tools 9, and keeping up with the Joneses.

Its official! Pro Tools 9 has landed on our doorstep and is being installed on our many Mac’s as we speak.  Pro Tools has come a long way since the days of the 888′s and 001′s.There is no wonder why its today’s leading professional audio recording and mixing software.  And with version 9 there’s more features, more toys and more power than ever before. The best thing is, version 9 is no longer hardware dependant and can run on any interface available on the market. I never thought I would see the day when you could run Pro Tools through your bog standard headphone output. Check out the new features below along with a couple videos.S Read more »

Look what the RED tide brought in

Things are moving up in our main tracking room. Our most recent addition to our already almighty arsenal of audio weapons is none other than the mythical Focusrite RED series processors, in the form of the RED3 stereo compressor and the awesome RED2 equalizer. These puppies sound amazing! I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming. And after the initial test runs mops where brought out to saturate the drool that was left on the floor.  The Focusrite RED series are up there with some of the best tools on the market. Cape audio college students are extremely lucky to be gaining valuable experience with processors of this heritage. The RED’s are here and they are here to stay. Carry on reading, we have some videos and links to wet your taste buds. Read more »