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Sound Guide for Musicians
A free course in how sound works and how to control it — physics, live reinforcement, recording, and theory. Take Sounding Good on Stage from the first booking email to advancing a real room on this week's listings, start a track, or jump to what you need.
Sounding Good on Stage
The gig is the exam. This path takes a working band from the first booking email to advancing a real room on this week's listings.
You can book a date, walk in with a plot and a list, and sound like you belong — in a room you have never seen.
Be the easiest yes
Stage craft
The room
The deal
Studio translation
Ship it
Musician briefing
One advanceable room from this week's listings and one lesson. Not the fan city digest.
The Physics of Sound
Why sound behaves the way it does — waves, level, distance and rooms.
Beginner
How Sound Actually WorksWaves, frequency, phase and harmonics — what is physically happening between an instrument and an ear.6 min read
How You Hear — and How to Keep HearingThe cochlea, why loudness is a dose rather than a moment, masking, and why a mix loses its bass the instant you turn it down.7 min read
Intermediate
The Decibel, DemystifiedWhy audio measures everything in ratios, what dBu, dBV and dB SPL each refer to, and the three rules of thumb worth memorising.7 min read
Sound OutdoorsThe inverse square law, air absorption and wind — why an outdoor stage needs far more power and still sounds dull at the back.7 min read
Live Sound & Reinforcement
Getting a band through a PA without feedback, mud or a fight.
Beginner
Gain Staging: Why Your Signal ClipsSet levels once, in the right order, and everything downstream gets easier — on stage and in the studio.5 min read- Advancing a Show: Stage Plots, Input Lists and RidersThe email that prevents most of what goes wrong at soundcheck — what to send the venue, and what to ask them.6 min read
Live Sound: PA, Monitors and Surviving SoundcheckWhat the house engineer needs from you, what to ask for in your monitor mix, and why the room always wins.4 min read- Power on Stage: Circuits, Not SpeakersWhat a 15A wall socket or a 13A plug actually gives you, why the PA is not the load that trips the breaker, and why you never chain one power strip into another.7 min read
Intermediate
Feedback: Why It Happens and How to Kill ItWhy the loop rings at one frequency, what ringing out really buys, and why indoors the room — not the microphone — sets your ceiling.7 min read- Microphones: Patterns, Placement and ProximityTransduction, polar patterns and proximity effect — why what a mic rejects, and how it sounds off-axis, matter more on a loud stage than how it sounds pointed straight at the source.8 min read
- Monitors and Stage SoundWedges versus in-ears without the sales pitch, why stage volume decides what the audience gets, and how to ask for a monitor change an engineer can act on.7 min read
Cables, Connectors and DI BoxesWhy a balanced line rejects noise, when cable length starts to cost you treble, what a DI box is really doing — and why the ground-lift switch is not the pin in the wall.7 min read
Dynamic Range and HeadroomWhere the range between hiss and clipping actually goes, why the top of it is supposed to sit empty, and what compression charges you for apparent loudness.7 min read- Digital Consoles and Networked AudioScenes and recall, stage boxes, shared preamps and the gain-sharing trap, Dante and friends, latency, and free multitracks.7 min read
Advanced
- Power, Impedance and Matching Amps to SpeakersWhy paralleling one more cabinet changes what the amplifier has to survive, what a power rating leaves out, and why clipping kills drivers without sending DC anywhere.9 min read
- PA Systems and LoudspeakersWhat each enclosure type trades away, why high frequencies need a horn, what a crossover point costs you, and why a sensitivity figure cannot be compared across brands.9 min read
Reading Audio SpecificationsA specification is a claim made under conditions the manufacturer chose — how to read frequency response, noise, distortion and level figures for what they leave out.9 min read
Studio & Recording
Capturing performances and turning them into finished mixes.
Beginner
Recording Basics: Mics, Rooms and LevelsDynamic vs condenser, where to put the mic, and how hot to track — the first-demo essentials.4 min read- Choosing Your DAWGarageBand, Logic, Pro Tools, Reaper, Live and Sonar — what each costs, who each is wrong for, and why projects don't move between them.7 min read
Mixing Basics: Balance Before Anything ElseLevels, panning and bus thinking — the 80% of mixing that isn't plugins.5 min read
Intermediate
- Studio Mic Placement, Instrument by InstrumentConcrete starting positions for guitar, cabinet, vocals, drums, piano and bass — and which way to move the mic for which problem.8 min read
Tracking in a DAW: Sessions, Takes and CompingSample rate and bit depth without the folklore, what buffer size actually costs a player once you count the round trip, and how to leave a session someone can still open in six months.7 min read- EQ Fundamentals: Carving Space in the MixWhat the frequency ranges actually sound like, why cutting beats boosting, and the moves that fix muddy live sound.4 min read
- Compression, Explained Without the MysteryThreshold, ratio, attack and release in plain language — and when a compressor helps versus hurts.5 min read
Gates, De-essers and SidechainsEvery one of these is a compressor with a different detector — what it listens to, and what it does when the threshold is crossed.7 min read
Reverb and Delay: Putting a Sound in a SpacePre-delay, decay and damping; slapback and tempo-synced repeats; why they belong on a shared send, and why you use less of both live.6 min read
Live vs Recorded: What Changes and WhyThe same song needs different decisions on stage and in the studio — here's what actually differs.5 min read
Advanced
Mixing in the Box: Buses, Sends and AutomationWhy a 32-bit float mix bus cannot clip and four things downstream still can, what a bus and a send each buy you, and how automation turns a static balance into a performance.9 min read- Mastering BasicsWhat mastering decides and what it cannot repair, how streaming loudness normalisation ended the loudness war, and why true peak is the number that matters at delivery.8 min read
Music Theory
The language underneath the notes.
Beginner
Notes, Intervals and ScalesWhere the twelve notes came from and what it cost to get them, the distances worth knowing by ear, and why a scale is a pattern of steps rather than a list of names.7 min read
Chords and ProgressionsWhere a key's seven chords come from, why roman numerals make a progression portable between keys, and why the same handful of progressions keeps coming back.7 min read- Ear Training: Hearing What You Already KnowRelative pitch over perfect pitch, anchoring intervals to songs you know, hearing chord function, and transcription as the actual practice.5 min read
Intermediate
Keys, Modes and the Circle of FifthsWhat the circle is actually for, why relative keys share a signature, and why rotating a scale does not give you a mode.7 min read
Melody: The Line People Actually RememberContour before pitch, range against tessitura, a motif as a cell you transform — and why the note landing on the downbeat is the one that defines the chord.7 min read
Rhythm, Meter and Time SignaturesTempo, meter and subdivision are three separate dials — how to convert BPM to milliseconds without guessing the note value, why 6/8 is not two bars of 3/8, and why swing is a percentage.8 min read
Improvising Over ChangesLand on a chord tone when the chord changes, learn guide-tone lines rather than more scales, and know why the blues gets to use one scale when almost nothing else does.8 min read
Advanced
Harmony and Voice LeadingWhy chords pull the way they do — harmonic function, what the individual notes do between one chord and the next, secondary dominants and tritone substitution, and why the voice-leading rules describe one period's style rather than legislating music.8 min read- Song Form and ArrangementWhy verse-chorus and AABA describe what listeners expect rather than templates to fill, what a pre-chorus and a bridge each actually do, and why arrangement is frequency and density management rather than adding parts.8 min read
The Field Manual
The working reference — connectors, mics, amps, power and the hardware between them, entry by entry.
Beginner
- Connectors and Cable Types, IdentifiedEvery plug you will meet on a stage — XLR, TRS, speakON, powerCON and the rest — what each one carries, and why the three cable species must never swap jobs.9 min read
Microphones: The Working InventoryDynamics, condensers, ribbons and boundary mics as physical objects — which box does which job, what phantom power actually feeds, and which ones you can drop.8 min read
Stands, Clips and Stage HardwareThe unglamorous inventory that decides whether the show works — boom stands, thread adapters, shock mounts, speaker poles, gaff tape and the physics of not falling over.7 min read- The Kit Bag: Spares, Testing and Field RepairsWhat to carry, how to test a cable in thirty seconds, which repairs are yours to make — and the ones that are never yours, starting with anything inside a tube amp.7 min read
Intermediate
- Amplifiers, From Backline to RackPower amps, instrument amps, tubes against transistors and class D against everything — what the panel controls actually do, and the two loading mistakes that kill amplifiers.8 min read
Loudspeakers in the FieldTelling a wedge from a front-of-house box, a passive cabinet from a powered one, and a subwoofer from a bass bin — plus how to pole-mount, stack and pair them without regret.7 min read- Power Distribution: The HardwareIEC leads, powerCON, distros, cable reels and residual-current protection — identifying the mains hardware on a stage and the handful of rules that keep it boring.7 min read
Gear Reviews
The pieces you keep meeting — what each one is, why it earned its place, and what it costs you.
Beginner
The Shure SM58: Why Every Stage Has OneSixty years of the same vocal microphone — what the design actually gets right, what it trades away, and why replacing it is harder than it looks.6 min read- The Shure SM57: One Capsule, Every SnareThe SM58's sibling with the grille off — why the same cartridge became the default on snare drums and guitar cabinets, and where it genuinely isn't the right call.5 min read
- The Radial JDI: A Transformer in a BoxA passive DI built around one very good transformer — what that buys you over the cheap alternative, and when an active box beats it anyway.5 min read
- The QSC K12.2: A PA in One BoxThe powered two-way that small venues standardised on — what the DSP presets actually change, and how to read a two-kilowatt claim for what it is.6 min read
- The Gibson Les Paul: Mass, Sustain and the HumbuckerWhy a heavy slab of mahogany with two humbuckers became half of rock's vocabulary — the 1952 origin, the 1957 pickup that defined it, and what Standard, Studio and Custom actually mean.6 min read
- The Fender Stratocaster: The Shape of the Electric GuitarLeo Fender's 1954 design brief made flesh — three single coils, a vibrato bridge, the in-between quack, and why the silhouette became the word 'guitar'.6 min read
- The Fender Telecaster: First, Simplest, Still HereThe first mass-produced solid-body electric — a bolted-together plank whose bridge-pickup twang built country, and whose simplicity outlived every fashion since 1950.5 min read
Intermediate
- The Shure SM7B: The Broadcast Mic That Went EverywhereA 1973 radio microphone that ended up on landmark pop vocals and half the internet's podcasts — and the gain problem every new owner discovers the first night.6 min read
The Fender Twin Reverb: Clean Headroom, at a CostThe loudest clean amp most players will ever meet — why its headroom is the whole point, and why the same property makes it the wrong amp for most rooms.6 min read- The Behringer X32: The Console That Reset the PriceThe digital desk that put scenes, recallable preamps and multitrack capture in rooms that could never afford them — and the habits it quietly rewards and punishes.6 min read
The Fender Precision Bass: The Default Low EndThe 1951 instrument that replaced the upright on stage — why it was called Precision, what the split pickup changed, and how one Motown session player defined its sound.5 min read- The Rhodes: Tines, Bark and BellHarold Rhodes's electromechanical piano — how a struck tine becomes that bell-glass tone, Suitcase versus Stage, and why neo-soul dragged it back for good.5 min read
Advanced
The Teletronix LA-2A: Two Knobs and a LightAn optical compressor with almost no controls — how the T4 cell's program-dependent release made it the default vocal leveller, and what the plugin versions model.6 min read- The UREI 1176: The Fast OneBill Putnam's FET limiter — microsecond attack, a backwards attack knob, four ratio buttons and the all-buttons trick, and why it lives on drums and vocals alike.6 min read
- The Leslie 122: The Speaker That Is an InstrumentDonald Leslie's rotating horn and drum — the Doppler effect as a musical device, why organists fought over it, and what it takes to mic one properly.6 min read
- The Hammond B3: Drawbars and TonewheelsNinety-one spinning tonewheels, nine drawbars per manual and a 190-kilogram commitment — how the B3 makes its sound, and why it is almost always mentioned in the same breath as a Leslie.6 min read
- The Roland TR-808: The Flop That Built GenresA commercial failure of a drum machine whose synthesised kick became the foundation of hip-hop, electro and trap — what the 808 actually is, and why it sounded wrong enough to matter.6 min read
Head to Head
The classic either-or questions — what each choice actually optimises for, and which one you need.
Beginner
- Les Paul vs StratocasterThe two default electric guitars, compared where they actually differ — construction, pickups, weight, feel and the music each one keeps getting hired for.6 min read
- Telecaster vs StratocasterFender against Fender — what four years of design evolution changed, why the Tele bites and the Strat quacks, and how to choose between two guitars that share a headstock logo.5 min read
- SM57 vs SM58The same cartridge behind two different grilles — what actually differs, which one to buy first, and whether either records vocals as well as the internet claims.5 min read
- Dynamic vs Condenser MicrophonesThe first decision in every microphone purchase — how the two designs actually differ, and why the right answer flips between the stage, the studio and the untreated bedroom.6 min read
Intermediate
Tube vs Solid-State AmpsThe longest-running argument in backline — what tubes genuinely do differently, what the folklore gets wrong, and how wattage confuses the whole comparison.6 min read- In-Ear Monitors vs WedgesThe monitoring decision that changes the whole stage — isolation against ambience, hearing protection against cost, and why the switch fails when only the singer makes it.6 min read
- Analog vs Digital MixersFaders you can grab against scenes you can recall — where analogue genuinely still wins, where digital ended the argument, and what the sound-quality debate actually amounts to.6 min read
- Active vs Passive DI BoxesOne question decides it — does the source have electronics pushing it? — plus the edge cases where the rule bends and the isolation trick only one side can do.5 min read
The Working Band
Booking, promotion, money and the paperwork of playing out — the business side of the practical hub.
Beginner
- How to Book Your First GigFinding the rooms that fit, writing the email a booker will actually answer, and the honest arithmetic of draw — for bands and solo acts alike.7 min read
- How to Promote a ConcertThe four weeks before a show, structured — posters, socials, local press and the day itself, and why the venue's own channels are the ones most bands forget.7 min read
- The Press Kit (EPK): What Bookers Actually ReadOne page, three photos, two links and a stage plot — what belongs in an electronic press kit, what gets ignored, and the honesty that gets bands rebooked.6 min read
- Load-In and Changeover: Shared-Bill EtiquetteThe unwritten code of a multi-band night — who sets up first, how shared backline works, and why the changeover clock is the real audition.6 min read
- Working With the House EngineerThe most influential stranger of your night — what to tell them, how to ask for monitor changes they can act on, and the etiquette that gets bands rebooked.6 min read
- The Merch TableThe tiny retail business that out-earns the door — stock depth, lighting and pricing, who staffs it, venue cuts, and why the mailing list is the real product.6 min read
Intermediate
- How Much Do Bands Get Paid? Doors, Guarantees and SplitsThe deal structures behind the money — door splits, guarantees, versus deals and support fees — plus the royalties working bands forget to collect.7 min read
- Touring: The Van, the Border and the PaperworkThe freight-company half of touring — vehicle and gear insurance, serial-number inventories, work authorization, carnets and cabotage, and who to ask for the current rules.8 min read
- When to Bring Your Own EngineerWhat a hired engineer actually buys — consistency, not better ears — what it costs against each deal structure, and the trusted-ear middle path most bands should use first.7 min read
Worksheets & Templates
The course materials — print-ready templates for the documents every advance needs. A free account unlocks them.
Beginner
- Stage Plot TemplateThe one-page plot to print and draw on — header block, audience-perspective grid, symbols, and the completeness checklist an engineer would run.5 min readFree account
- Input List TemplateA worked example plus a blank twenty-channel table in drums-first order — source, capture, stand, and the notes column where shows are saved.4 min readFree account
- The Advance Email ScriptThe copy-paste advance — subject-line format, the timing and technical questions inline, the money line that makes the thread a contract, and the re-advance variant.5 min readFree account
- Technical Rider ChecklistThe standing document, built once — inputs, backline, monitors, power and proportionate hospitality, each with the one-line why.4 min readFree account
- Door Deal Question SheetThe questions to ask before saying yes, a fill-in agreement block to send back in the thread, and a one-line glossary of every deal structure.5 min readFree account