Gray Spark Audio Academy's Blog

Industry Updates

Newsletters that Musicians and Producers to keep you up to date with whats happening

In the ever evolving world of Audio and Music it’s important for everyone to keep themselves up to date with the hottest things happening in the industry. These newsletters will help you do just that.  Step no. 1 MusicREDEF REDEF is a curated newsletters and conversation hub for all things media. It’s not limited to

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Tutorials / Masterclass

How to Practice Ear Training

Ear training is the process in which musicians and audio engineers use only hearing to gauge pitches, intervals, melodies and chords etc.In this blog post we will primarily be talking about “Pitch” or frequency interval training. This training involves training you ear to easily identify which frequencies are popping out of the given sound. Step

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Tutorials / Masterclass

What even is dB FS?

What really are Decibels? Decibels simply put are a way to take large values of measurements and convert them into a simpler more understandable set of numbers. Decibel is 1/10th of a Bel, named after Alexander Graham Bell who first used them to measure the loss of signals over telephone lines. Decibels come in many

Plugins
Software and equipment

4 plugins you’ve probably heard of but dont use enough

Step no. 1 De-Esser / Resonance Suppressor There are various Resonance suppressor plugins in the market right now, tools like Soothe and TDR Nova that can be of real help in situations where you have extreme resonances with your sound source. They can work like De-essers as well and help you clean up things that

Ghosts
From The Live Room

Palindroma – Ghosts Interview with Nitin M Krishna

Step no. 1 What process do you follow when writing songs? Do you have ideas that you create and go back to them later in the music production phase? There is no particular process that I follow. Sometimes inspiration just hits and I’ll be done with the song in a few hours. Sometimes I’d come

Industry Updates

Top 5 Saturators to look at for your mix and master

A Saturator is a tool that is commonly used during a mixing and mastering stage to add certain harmonic excitement to a track. Saturators come in various forms and today we will talk about a few common saturators that I use in my Mastering chain and that drive a lot of decisions that are taken

Software and equipment

10 Mastering Plugins that I can’t live without

Everyone has their set of tools that they can’t live without, today in this blog post i’ll discuss some of the Mastering Plugins that are always a part of my signal chain. They vary from different kinds of EQs to compressors to Saturators.This post could be helpful for people who are looking for new tools

headphones
Software and equipment

Headphone Buying Guide 2021

Every year as new students start their foray into the world of Audio Engineering, students are always looking to buy the best pair of headphones. There are many factors to consider when buying headphones and some are more important than others and in this blog post today we will discuss the factors that you need

Software and equipment

5 Entry level Sound Cards for the budding Sound Engineer

Every year at the start of a new batch, every student finds themselves in this dilemma in which interface / sound card they should buy as a starting point to work on their projects and basic home recordings. This blog post will also be helpful for musicians who are looking to buy some basic home

Miscellaneous

Betting on the Future

About betting on the future, remember those days when people like you and me used to actually BUY music? Waiting for the local Music store to bring in that cassette of the Artists you’ve heard about from a friend or a new album of an artist that you have been waiting to listen to? Waiting

monitors
Software and equipment

How to Calibrate and Set Up your Monitors

Good monitoring and monitor calibration is without a doubt one of the most important aspects of Audio engineering, be it recording or Mixing or even Mastering. The lack of decent monitoring can make your life as an engineer hell. In this blog post we will talk about a few ways that we can set up

Plugins
Industry Updates

7 Saturation Plugins you MUST try out

We’ve all been at that stage during a recording session or in a mix where we want a little more drive, a bit of that aggression and forwardness, brightness to the sound you’re working with. Saturation comes in many forms today, as plugins as physical hardware units but in this blog post, I’ll list down

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Software and equipment

Mastering in the Age of Streaming – Part 2

In the last series of this blog, we discussed how loudness normalization impacts how music is mastered in this day and age. What happens when you try to make a master loud vs play something that is not as limited as a loud master. Today let’s try to go through a few tools that will

Software and equipment

Mastering in the Age of Streaming – Part 1

Over the past few weeks, everyone at the studio has been involved in this constant discussion about what the right approach to mastering a streaming service should be. Should we still aim to sound sonically loud or upfront as people call it? Or should we aim to sound the most dynamic of the batch? How

Industry Updates

5 Plugins you MUST buy

In this blog series I will try to answer the most commonly asked question to me, which Plugins should I buy first if I wanna start mixing. Let me clarify you don’t “NEED” them, one can very easily build a good mix with just the stock plugins that are at your disposal in most DAWS,

Industry Updates

5 Must-Read books about the biggest Music producers

In this blog, you can check out 5 books about the Biggest Music Producers of all time No. 1 Sound Man: A Life Recording Hits with The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, Eric Clapton, the Faces. . . by Glyn Johns A memoir of a remarkable rock-and-roll career from Glyn Johns, a

Industry Updates

The Studio Business Pt 9 – Advertising and Marketing your Studio Business

Once you’ve gone ahead and got yourself a nice studio setup, the next goal is to get a constant flow of Musicians, Producers, and Composers to keep working out of your space. We spoke briefly in the last blog about building long-lasting business connections and how to go about actually getting and building new clientele.

Industry Updates

The Recording Studio Business- Part eight: The Art of Scheduling

A Studio manager’s primary task is to ensure the smooth flow of booking and clients through the day and to keep the daily activities running. In this blog post, I will talk about a few things you can look at from a recording studio perspective that will help set in place processes like Scheduling that will

Industry Updates

The recording Studio Business : Part Seven

In any business, success is based on communication and building and fostering long term relationships with your customers and clientele. In this blog, we will talk about a few important aspects of developing connections. No. 1 Building Connections: It goes without saying that in the recording studio business, connections play an important role in finding

Recording Studio
Industry Updates

More Creative Ways to Generate Income: Part Six

This blog will be a continuation of the last blog in this series about generating Income through the Recording Studio Business. Today we shall discuss a few more ideas that business owners, engineers, producers, and musicians can think about. No. 1 Music/Dialogue Editing and Sound Design: With the sudden explosion of OTT platforms like Hotstar,

Industry Updates

The Recording Studio Business : Part 3 – What does it cost and how do I budget?

In continuation of our last few blogs in today’s blog, we will discuss the importance of budgeting and lay down detailed steps, and list down some of the key components and building blocks of a recording studio. Here we will take into consideration various budgets from small scale to Midrange studios and how to go

Industry Updates

The Recording Studio Business in India Part 2

In the previous blog of this series, we discussed how to go about sourcing funding and what things one should be looking for when trying to build a recording studio business. Today we will discuss a few other important aspects of this business mainly from the human resource point of view as well as budgeting

Software and equipment

What equipment does an Audio Engineer starting out need to buy?

A lot of Audio Engineers who are starting out are faced with the question of what Equipment they should Invest in before enrolling for a course. Today in this blog post we will cover a list of essential equipment that budding engineers should consider investing in so that they can make the most of their

Industry Updates

The Recording Studio Business Part 1

Starting a Professional Recording Studio? In this blog series I will share with you a few of my learnings as an Engineer and Business owner as well give you enough actionable points and lessons to get you started. In my experience, sometimes it is great to go with your gut and start a business, but

From The Live Room

Mastering Celestial Teapot-Ellipsis

In this series of Blogs I will be walking through the Mastering Process of some of the songs that we have worked on in the recent past. This specific song has majority rock elements with some surprises thrown in between.This is what the mix looks like MIX:https://drive.google.com/a/gray-spark.com/file/d/1_qVYsNawe40TodLwoLlxl_eEtlBHA1dm/view?usp=gmail The song has some very distinctive heavy sections

Software and equipment

5 Amazing Limiters you must try in your Mastering Chain

Limiters are the sexiest/coolest thing in a mastering chain. They are the one plugin that can have a big impact on how loud your final mixes can get. In this post, I’ll talk about a few plugins that I use in my mastering chain, which are my go-to plugins for achieving a specific sound.Let’s dive

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Software and equipment

7 Free Audio Plugins to Get Started

So you’ve installed your DAW and are ready to start recordings and work on mixes only to realize that you don’t have any Plugins to really work with? Today in this post I’ll show you guys some must have Free Audio Plugins for any DAW and get started working or recordings/mixes. No. 1 TDR KOTELNIKOV

Industry Updates

Artist Releases during the COVID-19 Lockdown

Rolling into Month 5 of the Lockdown in India and we can see a ton of musicians taking this pause to release even more of their music. At a time when resources are limited, income has practically come to a standstill, musicians have still come through, recorded and released their tracks. And for that, we