The Honablue Institute of Audio Engineering School (THI) welcomes our newest class of students; Carl Jones, Kheral Ricketts, Cyril Greene, and Brian Stewart. They have already been actively involved in recording sessions. We look forward to a great 10 months with them.    

THI’s staff and students get the benefit of Robert Honablue’s industry contacts. So far we have visited both Dolby Labs and Sear Sound in Manhattan. The students are gaining valuable insight into the real world of audio engineering.  

Today, the recording industry has two kinds of producers: music producers and executive producers, both who have different roles in the recording process. A music producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording (i.e. “production”) of an artist’s music. A [...]

Mariachi Flor de Toloache is featured in the NY Times today. They are recording their album here at THI and the studio footage you see in the video is of our studios. Nice to see them getting some well-deserved attention. Omari Edwards – Recording Engineer Branden Duroseau-Allen – Assistant Engineer

Most music performance spaces are less than ideal acoustically. This can lead to problems with P.A. systems feeding back, and guess who gets blamed for that? The engineer! Here is a quick trick you can use when shape of the room is working against you. Caution, this requires an understanding [...]

Drummers! There is nothing that can stop a session faster than a rattling drum. You may not be aware of it now, but chances are that somewhere on your kit there is something that is rattling. When you are playing a gig, there is a lot of extraneous background noise [...]

When a recording is sold for retail sale the public hears two channels of audio; one for the left and one for the right, but when music is being created in the studio, the standard procedure since the 1960’s has been to capture the music on separate tracks. This is [...]

THI recently acquired a Sony PCM 3324 digital tape machine. This machine is from the early 1980’s and was among the first that brought digital technology into the recording studio. Looking back, this machine can be seen as an intermediate step in the transition from analog tape machines to hard [...]

Becoming an audio engineer is an exciting journey that expands the experience of listening to music. Producing an excellent sounding recording takes extensive knowledge and experience. Because technology is always changing and new recording techniques are always being developed, engineers need to stay up to date on the current technology. [...]

      Now that you know what mastering is, let’s talk about what it is not. Mastering is not for adjusting individual levels of instruments. A particular instrument can be accentuated but individual adjustments need to be done during the mixing phase. Mastering is not for making your album [...]

Why is The Honablue Institute Different From Other Audio Schools? At The Honablue Institute (THI) we prepare you for the real world of audio engineering.  Other schools put their focus on teaching software – and very little emphasis on crucial engineering skills such as microphone techniques or session procedures. From [...]

Electro-Tango artist Martin Fuks brought his project Amapola Dry to THI Studios to add live string players to his existing Pro Tools session files. The session was a lot of fun and Robert was cracking a lot of jokes. Martin brought a videographer with him to film the session and [...]

  There is much confusion these days about the roles of the engineer and producer. It is true that these two different jobs have often merged into one, but let’s take a closer look at the two different jobs as they were traditionally performed. We might find out that there [...]

Recording is one part of the larger music industry that is which up of artists, musicians, engineers, producers, executives, promoters, agents, etc. Of all the various positions, a degree is only necessary if you want to be the executive. You won’t reach that level with some form of formal business [...]

This is a great interview with a seasoned recording engineer turned producer. Ken Scott’s method almost exactly mirrors THI’s philosophy and approach to recording. Take note especially of his comments about mic preamps, “A” vs “B” mics, and the value of learning recording on a 4 track machine. The interview [...]

A big thanks to Justin Carroll and Judd Nielsen who came by the studio to help us upgrade our Hammond Organ. We have a B-2 from the early 50′s. When Hammond came out with the B-3 they added a circuit called Percussion. Now, for those who don’t know, this is [...]

If you are reading this post, you already have an interest in music and engineering. But I want you to ask yourself exactly why it is that you are interested in learning music engineering. Are you having trouble finding an engineer whom you can trust to get good sounds for [...]

In the recent months, THI Studios has begun to do mixing sessions with Pro Tools based files.  Some clients have recorded elsewhere (at home, for example) and come to us to mix down the project. This blog post is intended as a general reference so that the artists and producers [...]

A recording engineer comes equipped with one set of ears that perform 3 different functions: Recording ears Mixing ears Mastering ears For this reason, engineers in the audio field should have an in depth knowledge of the ears that will carry them through a life time of recording, mixing or [...]

HOW TO FEEL FULFILLED AS AN ARTIST (or, HOW TO GET OVER YOUR SELF-SABOTAGE) Never compare yourself to other artists. Know that your family is biased. Whether for or against, their views skewed and do not represent an accurate reflection of your work in the world. Base your success on [...]