Morph Productions

5 Reasons Your Song Still Sounds Amateur — Even After Mixing & Mastering Hamilton & Toronto Mixing Engineer – Morph Productions If you’ve been mixing your own tracks and they still don’t sound clean, wide, or “finished,” you’re not alone. Most artists I work with know the basics, EQ, compression, a limiter on the master bus but the results still fall short of the pro sound they hear on Spotify. The truth? It’s rarely one big mistake. It’s usually a handful of small oversights that stack up and hold your mix back. Here are the issues I see most often when artists come to me for mixing and mastering and how to fix them. 1. The Low-End Is Fighting Itself You can know everything about EQ, but if the low-end foundation isn’t right, the whole mix collapses. Most common issues I see: Kick and bass occupying the same frequency range Sub-heavy bass that disappears on small speakers No high-pass filtering on ...

I recently upgraded my portable rig that I use for voice overs and audio books.  We're at the point now with gear that sound quality isn't so much an issue but I'm always looking for opportunities to lower my noise floor.  To that end I had a UAD Twin mk2 that I ended up pairing with a Great River ME-1NV because it was a quieter setup.   Fast forward to now and I recently upgraded to a UAD Twin X gen 2 (the stupidest name in equipment history) and I wanted to see if the Great River preamp was still necessary.  If I can make the setup quicker and easier all the better.  Anyway I recorded some room tone all matched between the different preamps and then had ChatGPT analyze them and this is what it came up with: Apollo Twin MkII:           –51.9 dBFS (noisiest)   Great River:                          –53.9 dBFS   Apollo Twin X Gen 2:    ...

I’m starting to get clients coming to me with music they’ve made using Suno and other AI music generators, so I figured I’d write a quick post on how I can help people get more out of those tools. I’ll skip the arguments for or against AI in music because, honestly, that debate feels pointless. These tools are here, they’re powerful, and it makes sense to use them to your advantage. For this post, I’ll just stick to Suno.com since that’s the one I’ve been experimenting with. After playing around with Suno , I have to admit I was impressed. I threw in some of my old songs and asked for remixes and I have to say some of them turned out fantastic. Then I tried using,  beats I’ve struggled to write to, dropped in a few lines for lyric ideas, and it came back with some surprisingly solid results. It’s clear that the more you feed it, the more you get out of it. I can definitely see myself tossing in new ideas, even just to spark inspiration.  I came to think of it as having a rea...

Over the past year, I ran into a weird problem in my studio that taught me something I probably should have known already. Like most people running a small studio, I have a mountain of gear and all of it needs power. So naturally, I’ve always had a bunch of power bars plugged into the wall, often daisy-chained or hooked up through a rack-mounted surge protector like a Furman. When I moved my setup back into my house, I wired things up the way I always do but I started noticing issues. I was getting some nasty RF interference and ground hum on certain pieces of gear. I got it down to a workable level eventually, but I couldn’t shake the question:  why was it happening in the first place? I asked my good buddy, Chat GPT what the problem could be and it brought up something I hadn't considered. Using  multiple surge protectors  with different pieces of gear can actually  create grounding issues  and inject noise into your audio chain. Turns out, almost every power ...

Lately, I’ve been hearing from a lot of artists who are struggling with getting their music heard on social media platforms, thanks to some new rules about content ownership. Meta (Instagram, Facebook) and TikTok have decided to crack down on songs that contain non-exclusive content. This means any music featuring loops from sound libraries or non-exclusive beats that were leased could now be flagged or removed. It’s frustrating, especially when so much time and love go into crafting a track, even if the loop or beat isn’t 100% exclusive. In fact, one of my all-time favorite hip-hop tracks was created with a longstanding client using a leased beat (check it out:  Took You For Granted ). While these new rules can be discouraging, I might just be able to help you work around them! As a musician, I’ve been creating custom guitar loops for my own hip-hop beats, and recently, I’ve collaborated with Deep House producers. In fact, some of these tracks have racked up over  50 million ...

I’ve got a pretty solid home studio setup for mixing and producing tracks, but I’ve always wanted to get the low end more accurate in my space. I typically check my mixes on different monitors, earphones, and in the car, so the results are good overall. Still, I wondered if I could get things a little closer before jumping into other reference checks. For context, here’s what my room looks like: There's plenty of room treatment, but nothing professional. Enter…  SonarWorks SoundID ! SoundID is software that tests your room using their calibration mic, analyzes how your room and monitors affect your sound, and then compensates with an EQ to fix the room’s issues. The result is a more accurate listening environment for your audio work. I’ve known about SoundID for years, but I wasn’t fully sold on it at first. The original way of using it involved placing the plugin on your master bus. Since the EQ it applies is designed to balance out your room, it would probably sound off anywhere ...

So you've written your own book and are now looking into releasing it as an audiobook. As someone with 20 years of experience in this field, you've come to the right place! I wanted to use my expertise to create a blog that authors would find useful when navigating the process of audiobook production. Creating an audiobook involves recording the book (either yourself or with a paid narrator) and having it edited and mastered to meet ACX (Audible) specifications for release. Let's dive in! Choosing a Narrator The first step is deciding whether you want to narrate the book yourself or hire a professional. Both options have their pros and cons. Pros of Narrating Your Own Book: You can deliver it with the exact tone and inflection you intended. This is especially important for personal works, but even fiction sometimes benefits from an author's voice. No one knows your story better than you! It can save on costs, as hiring a narrator isn’t cheap, making self-narration a nec...