We checked in with the always-inventive Jakob Herrmann, mastermind behind our latest two EZXs, (Duality I and Duality II) to pick his brain on his five best and quickest tips for spicing up your recordings and maybe getting you out of your regular rut!

THE VIBE IS IN THE ROOM.
When micing a guitar or bass amp in a room, don’t shy away from also micing the actual room. A bass amp can really come to life with a room mic, and a guitar amp, especially for solos or melody overdubs, can get a certain vibe if room miced, that is hard to replicate with a reverb plugin.

TRY MID/SIDE MICING.
Try mid/side micing on different sources. In the new Duality EZXs, I chose to include mid/side mics because it’s a fantastic way to get an organic drum sound, especially if you want to “build” your sound from ambience mics rather than close mics. But mid/side can be used on so many things. Adding wideness to an electric guitar melody, or to make an acoustic guitar big and roomy without losing focus.

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO LOOK GOOD.
Mic things so they sound good, not so they look cool. Sometimes a weird angle sounds better and picks up less of the things you don’t want. Be open to many ways of doing things, and don’t be afraid to think outside the box sometimes.

STAY IN THE LOOP.
If a certain passage in a song is tricky, especially on vocals, make a loop recording of an even number of bars, and ask the vocalist to run through the part and focus on different things. Four takes for nailing the pitch, four takes for nailing the timing, four takes for expression, etc. Each time, he or she will make the performance better, without worrying about “getting back into it,”and in the end you can use bits of these takes to better the original performance.

AND FINALLY…
Make sure there’s coffee.

WHEN TWO WORLDS COLLIDE.

In this double EZX release by engineer Jakob Herrmann and drummer Alex Landenburg, two contrasting batteries of drums balance on the divide between clamoring sonic ideals. Welcome two new EZXs – equal, but worlds apart.

Videos, audio demos and more here.