Designing sounds with Massive X

Native Instruments released Massive X sometime in 2019 with the latest version 1.2 coming out in December of the same year. It’s meant to be the upgrade to the ever popular Massive, beloved by countless producers and sound designers. I bought Massive X when it came out, but with the plethora of soft synths I

MonoHive Sessions – Dhruv Visvanath

This Monohive session has been produced in collaboration with the Toto Music Awards, who are celebrating their 15th anniversary this year! ​Dhruv Visvanath was first noticed at the Toto Music Awards in 2012, when he was a young and upcoming singer songwriter with a simple acoustic guitar and a voice. He was long-listed that year

Are some DAWs more equal than others ?

What’s the best sounding DAW ? The Digital Audio Workstation or DAW for short is the ubiquitous centrepiece of the modern recording studio. Every studio on earth probably uses the DAW in some form or the other. It wasn’t always like this though before useable software and hardware arrived on the scene in the 90’s

This could completely change how you use compressors.

It’s been way too long since my last upload. Towards the end of the year 2016  got a bit crazy with gigs and whatnot. But now that the dust has settled, I’ve decided it’s time to indulge the people who depend on this blog to demystify their production queries. All five of them… Compressors can

Mixcraft Part 2 :VCA’s, Groups and general cleanup

Last week, you learnt how to shoot alien chickens in a laser tag arena. Good job. This week, we teach you how to lay an egg.

MixCraft Part 1: Levels and Phase

This series will deal with mixing a live recording from start to finish. I’ll be covering a lot of essential mixing basics. So if you’re new to the craft, perhaps some of this will help clear up a lot of questions you may have and speed up your process. The artist in the recording is

MonoHive Sessions – Abhijeet Tambe with Tony Das live at Rooster Guitars

Abhijeet Tambe has been a part of various musical projects over the years. Most notably the Bangalore based act Lounge Piranha. He’s also explored sound design, performs live music for theatre and works with DSP. His latest foray into music making has led him to explore more traditional song writing if there is such a

Rig rundown – Bruce Lee Mani

It doesn’t matter if you’re a tone snob, tone deaf, a riff junkie or the guy who spontaneously combusts if he doesn’t play a guitar solo on every song he writes. The one thing that unites all modern guitar players is gear. Please note that I use the term “unite” in the loosest sense possible.

MonoHive Sessions – Shepherd live at Indie March 2016

The first article I wrote on this page was about this band. This is some footage from their gig at a music festival in Bengaluru, India called Indie March. Look out for that epic jam!!

MonoHive Sessions – Nikhil Narendra and Shreyas Dipali Live at Bflat

Kick starting a series of videos featuring artists that I feel are pushing themselves to explore some far out sounds. It’ll mostly revolve around live shows, but may branch out into other things. Here’s the first one featuring two very talented musicians from my hometown of Bangalore, India.