Instructional Videos

Shaping your Sound, hosted by engineer, producer and master teacher Tom Lubin, is the acclaimed series of programs designed to teach professional recording techniques to engineers, video production personnel, musicians and home recordists. Dozens of demonstrations, animated sequences and live music examples in hi-fi stereo make each tape a powerful learning and reference tool.

Tom Lubin takes you through a complete 8-track recording Session, including preproduction, session planning and preparation, the basic session, and the overdubbing process.

Learn how to get the cleanest possible sound from your recorder, strategies for bouncing tracks, and techniques of sculpting sound with precision erasure, editing and speed shifting.

Tom Lubin shows you the various types of microphones and demonstrates how the variables of size, mass and pickup pattern affect a microphone's sound. He helps you develop a feel for choosing the right microphone in any situation and demonstrates strategies for reinforcing drums, guitars, horn and string ensembles, pianos and vocals.

Digital delays can add echo, create delays, and produce the effects of phasing, flanging and chorusing. A digital reverb can literally shape the space where your sound happens - move the walls and change their texture, turn your studio into a cavern or cathedral.

Tom Lubin demonstrates the behavior of sounding a variety of real environments. Then extensive before-and-after demos let you see and hear the shaping predelay, delay time, early reflections, diffusion, and the other components of customized reverb and delay effects.

Tom Lubin shows how to use EQ to make room for each instrumental texture. Animated graphics introduce you to the various types of EQ curves and devices, while step-by-step demonstrations show you how to set up EQ for any instrument.

Then you'll learn how to use compressors and gates to shape the dynamics of any instrument by emphasizing or diminishing the attack, sustain or release of each note.

Sit behind the console with Tom Lubin as he takes you through every step of a 16 track mix, from the first rough mixes through shaping and blending each instrument using EQ, reverb, delay, panning and dynamics.

Along the way you'll learn how to get maximum flexibility from your console, and how to read block diagrams to choose the best route through your board.