PreSonus Blog

Author Archives: Perry Tee


A mobile recording studio in the Colorado Rockies with Nathan Larsen

Don’t leave home without PreSonus.

Nathan certainly didn’t forget to bring his ATOM SQ along for this amazing songwriting excursion into the Colorado Rockies!

PreSonus, Wherever sound takes you.

New PreSonus Sphere Artist: Emily Wolfe’s “LA/NY” Playthrough

Here’s Emily using the Revelator io24 audio interface to perform her latest track, “LA/NY,” live from her home studio setup!

 

In conjunction with Studio One‘s Show Page, the pre-recorded backing tracks (drums/synthbass) and her live vocal and guitar audio signals can be professionally mixed and ready for livestreaming.

“LA/NY” is just one of many tracks from Outlierher latest record. She discusses more about the production of Outlier below.


Tell us a bit more about “LA/NY”

“LA/NY” is a new song off my latest album, Outlier. It is a bit of a different direction for me, because I wanted to put forth a killer pop tune that also shined a light on my love of a fuzzy guitar solo. 

Outlier is an album built on exquisite tension: like an endless push-and-pull between desire and resistance, determination and self-sabotage, the instinctive need to belong and the urge to strike out on your own. My songs were produced by Michael Shuman (Queens of the Stone Age and Mini Mansions) and it’s an album full of guitar-drenched sounds that’s wildly unpredictable and immediately magnetic.

What amp/pedals did you use for “LA/NY”?

It was all done within Studio One, using the PreSonus Ampire plug-in. Specifically, I used the Wild Drive, Demolition Drive, Equalizer and Delay pedals running into the Blackface Twin model amp paired with a 2×12 American Cabinet.

(NOTE: if you’re a PreSonus Sphere Member, you can download her exact Ampire Preset here)

How did you first discover PreSonus?

I first discovered PreSonus while working at a music shop in Austin, TX. They sold audio recording equipment from all different brands, but I noticed that PreSonus had the most intuitive software (Studio One Artist) included, as well as the best price point.

What was your first PreSonus product?

It was the Studio 1810c audio interface, but I have since upgraded to a Studio 1824c. I’ve got the FaderPort to the right of my computer keyboard. I also now have their Revelator io24 that you see me using in the video above, of course!

How long have you used Studio One?

About three years now.

What are your Top three favorite features about Studio One?

My favorite aspect of Studio One is how easy it is to use. The drag & drop aspect helps me work really quickly and efficiently. I also really love using Impact for drum sounds, Presence for sample-based instrument sounds, the Mai Tai polyphonic synthesizer, and Ampire for pedal FX and amp modeling.


We’re so stoked to welcome Emily into the family as a Featured Artist on PreSonus Sphere!

She is sharing eight of her custom Ampire Presets, along with a custom Vocal Preset and a Mai Tai synthesizer patch for all PreSonus Sphere members to access and enjoy.

 

Emily Wolfe: Featured PreSonus Sphere Artist


Join PreSonus Sphere today to check out Emily Wolfe’s exclusive Presets and from those by other featured artists!

Only $14.95 per month for Studio One Professional, Notion, and so much more.

CMP (Craftmaster Productions): BOOST KNOB & Studio One

CMP is a sample creator and music producer from Miami, Florida.

He was introduced to Studio One via version 2 back in 2010, after being victim to a home invasion where his studio was picked apart clean. Newly-armed with a PC laptop gifted from one of his sympathetic colleagues, he went straight to Guitar Center where Studio One was sold to him on the promise that he could use familiar key commands from Logic. 

After installing the software and navigating around for a day, Studio One was his primary choice moving forward. CMP had used Cubase and Pro Tools previously, so there were features that instantly felt very familiar yet noticeably improved upon. From the Zoom In/Out functions, to the streamlined bus routing and the linear drag ‘n’ drop workflow… everything in Studio One seemed to work the way he wished it would have worked in other DAWs.

CMP now brings his excitement for Studio One with him to every studio session. As a producer in the hip-hop community, he started his Craftmaster Productions YouTube Channel in 2015 to showcase his passion for Studio One, and immediately began attracting the interest of other Studio One users online.

After a year of amazing feedback and growth on the platform, he created StudioOneTutorials.com, a place where the Studio One community could come and directly request content and courses from CMP. He also offers custom templates for Studio One via CMPKits.com along with compositions for producers to sample and flip, as well as his various MIDI products.

If you’re a Studio One user with even a passing interest in beatmaking production, subscribe to CMP on YouTube.

He’s been heavily supporting Studio One for a long time, and we’re all the better for it!

Kisnou: Emotional Journeys Across Sonic Landscapes

Italian musician, composer, and producer Kisnou shapes the undefined chaos that was generated as consequence to profound experiences growing up as his kingdom – a place where to give complete freedom to creativity and imagination.

With masterpieces such as “Alive,” “Falling Deeper,” and “Vertigo,” people from all over the world began to feel a deep connection with Kisnou’s music, counting for more than 7 million total streams on Spotify alone in 2020. Featured on BBC, New Balance, TV commercials and countless Spotify playlists, his music is often defined as otherworldly: perfect for anyone who wants to experience a real sonic journey.

From ambient to electronic, from orchestral to indie, Kisnou is a never-ending adventure that explores worlds of atmospheric sounds and storytelling. Featuring bittersweet poetry, untold stories, cold atmospheres, field recordings, and broken song structures, each song is a deep cinematic experience you will not forget.

Kisnou began making music using FL Studio back in 2015, eventually working for years within the Ableton Live software environment before recently discovering Studio One and PreSonus Sphere’s creative workflow environment.


In his words:

So… at the beginning, I really had no knowledge, never played an instrument. I just jumped and went for it. I felt like I had some stories to tell.

I’m a self-taught producer. It’s pretty easy to learn so many things online. I also used to listen to a lot of music, every day—while drawing or doing homework, while coming home from school. It was a part of me and of my life, every day. Many people are surprised when I say that I’m self-taught, especially those who are musicians or producers as well. It makes me feel happy, but I have always been down to Earth and very respectful. For example, in 2020 an American writer sent me one of his books, as a thank you gift because he loved my music. The book is called Wounded Tiger, and the author is such a wonderful person. It is a book about World War II and the true stories of multiple people that lived through that moment of history. I can’t say much about it but the author is trying to find the right chance to make a movie out of it… and I might be a part of the soundtrack team. Fingers crossed!

I graduated in 2019 and got my Bachelor of Arts in Commercial Music, but since 2017 I have been making music for a good fan base online that has grown quite fast. I hit my first million streams on a song, and from there it started to get even better! I had an income, collaboration opportunities, and a licensing partnership with Marmoset Music that got me some really good placements! One of my songs was featured in a New Balance commercial and a Tomorrowland video. Now music is my full time job. I currently have around 150,000 monthly listeners on Spotify alone.

The first artist who actually truly inspired me to make music was Koda. He is a talented guy from Los Angeles who wrote some beautiful songs. His songs were just pure magic for me, they resonated like nothing else. I felt like the lyrics were talking to me. My favorite song from him is “Angel.” I loved the video as well, so much that I contacted the video artist a couple of years ago and we created the music video for my song “In The Origin, We Breathe.”

Other inspirations include: The Cinematic Orchestra, Bersarin Quartett, Sorrow (a great electronic/garage music producer), Pensees, and Owsey. I come from the Ableton world, so I am also very much into electronic music, future garage, and ambient. I am in love with atmospheres, long reverbs, evolving sounds, textures and so on.

Lately I have been listening to the YouTube channel Cryo Chamber. Some songs are a bit too dark sometimes, but you can find such incredible atmospheres. I find it very inspiring.

You know, I live in the countryside, so I am always spending time in nature. I feel like I am lucky to be living here, but at the same time you might feel isolated or lonely quite often. It depends on the mood I guess.

I used Ableton for 3-4 years, made great songs thanks to that DAW, but somehow… I wasn’t really feeling comfortable there. I was slowly getting sick of it, even if the creative tools, the stock plugins and workflow were amazing.

By chance I found out about Studio One and then I started to see what you could do with it and it slowly got my interest, until I finally decided to make the switch.

Currently, I just try to make Studio One adapt to my workflow and that was quite easy. The possibility to internally customize shortcuts and create macros is just wonderful in my opinion. I have many macros mapped around my keyboard, and have others on the buttons of my mouse. I have mapped CTRL + ALT as a hold command on one of the two main side buttons, then on the other one I have a Macro that activates the bend marker view, automatically swaps to the Bend Tool so that I can do my edits and then press it again to deactivate the bend view.

On the four lower side buttons I have mapped the editor, channel, inspector and browser for quick tasks. Though If I hold control and press those buttons, or ALT, I have other sets of commands to help me out.

One more functionality that I love is the Transform to Audio Track command, which prints a MIDI file into audio, but it’s better compared to what I’ve seen in other DAWs I’ve used in the past (FL Studio, Ableton, or Pro Tools) because I can print the MIDI to audio and preserve the instrument—so that If I ever want to revert back to the plug-in, I can do that at any given moment. I can choose to render the insert FX or not, which is also great.

In other DAWs, I either had to make a copy of the plug-in, print one to audio and leave the other there, just disabled. Sometimes I printed a MIDI file into audio feeling that it was perfect, then days later, I felt like I wanted to edit the plugin… and I couldn’t do it anymore because I had not copied the plug-in instance before printing.

Lastly, I’m pleased to be a featured artist on PreSonus Sphere!

The presets I created revolve around the use of white noise, layering and distortion: aspects that I have been exploring in the last months to create a sort of vintage but modern, textured sound. Warm, lush pads and pluck sounds, distorted reverbs and atmospheres were my North Star when creating these presets.

There’s 20 presets in all in this pack: FX chains, pad sounds for Presence, some Macros, Mai Tai patches, and a custom reverb of mine… enjoy!

PreSonus Sphere members can click here to get them!

 


Join PreSonus Sphere today to check out Kisnou’s exclusive Presets and from those by other featured artists!

Only $14.95 per month for Studio One Professional, Notion, and so much more.

Hassan El Shafei: Journey Into Studio One

Our newest PreSonus Sphere Artist, Hassan El Shafei, is a musician, producer and founder of THE BASEMENT RECORDS in Egypt.


Hassan has produced records for some major artists in the Middle East, and was also one of the judges on the Arab Idol show (the equivalent to American Idol in the Middle East) for four seasons, which aired on MBC. Hassan started releasing his own records featuring other artists in the region, starting with this track, back in the days when he was predominantly still working in Logic and Ableton Live:

Here’s a more in-depth account of his history and evolution with DAWs and how he’s settled upon Studio One and PreSonus Sphere, in his own words:


I started producing a long time ago, using Logic when it was owned by E-magic (the good old days!) I loved Logic, but I felt limited until I got introduced to Ableton Live. I spent a bit of time on my own experimenting with it, but it was too daunting to use for ongoing projects until I took a quick crash course in London on Ableton Live, and then I switched when I felt comfortable using it. I didn’t switch 100 percent, though, because there were many things that were better done in Logic… but Ableton was a game changer, producing music in a completely different mindset… minimalism yet experimental!

The idea of racks, drum kits, and so on was endless, and it felt like a modular system that I could change according to my needs… BUT Ableton was also limiting in many ways: it was very unstable, and lacked many features—as if they were stubborn to actually fix or introduce features. So I started looking somewhere else after years of using Ableton and experimenting with the folks at Bitwig. (I even have a 1.0 badge, I think I had the beta before they released the first version!)

Bitwig were actually adding all the things to Ableton Live that the community wanted but, again they took their own route… which isn’t what I needed until finally I got introduced to Studio One.

I first tried Studio One 3 and was intrigued, but I couldn’t rely on it 100 percent until version 4 was out, which introduced Impact XT and Sample One XT. That changed everything for me, having its ease-of-use in my production environment—yet I also get the all-in-one kind of vibe, which I have never found in any DAW available and trust me… I have looked in every corner!!!

Studio One was the first DAW that lets me produce my whole record from writing ideas to final mixes in one place. That never happened before: it was always either Logic and Pro Tools or Ableton and Logic etc. Now it’s ONLY Studio One, and after all these years that’s really something special to note, in my opinion!

The workflow in Studio One is unbeatable: the Macros are pure magic, the ability to have Key Commands to assign uncommon commands makes Studio One very powerful. Production is a breeze, yet I have all these powerful tools: I can integrate Melodyne and ReVoice Pro via ARA, and I can use Layers while recording and Patterns for beatmaking.

Studio One is the most stable DAW I have ever used, it handles anything I throw at it. I have a big appetite when its comes to production, from producing pop records to scoring music to picture/video… and Studio One 5 is keeping up at my speed! Last but not least, the folks at PreSonus are amazing at consistently striving to achieve the best DAW out there; they are very active online, enthusiastic and most importantly… they listen to the community.

And that to me is priceless.

And one other thing—my newest projects have started to incorporatethe new Show Page in Studio One Version 5 for performing live perfectly in sync with my session tracks! Exciting!


Join PreSonus Sphere today! Only $14.95 per month for Studio One Professional, Notion, and so much more.


Follow Hassan on Instagram

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Dive into Ampire and Studio One with Forest Whitehead

Forest Whitehead hails originally from Shreveport, Louisiana, and has been based out of Nashville, TN since the fall of October of 2009.

Starting out as just a guitar player, he quickly began learning production and songwriting which led to signing his first publishing deal in 2011.

Since then, Forest has produced five #1 songs and has written four #1 songs most recognized for country superstar Kelsea Ballerini. He has a 2021 Grammy nomination for his work with Mickey Guyton for a song called “Black Like Me.”

After achieving success with his career in mainstream country radio, Whitehead has started an online presence called Music City Playbook that educates songwriters, artists, and producers on everything from songwriting, production, and publishing deals in the Nashville music industry.

With weekly production tutorials posted on his YouTube Channel, Forest’s goal is to become the go-to place online for quick success for songwriters wanting to produce their own music from home.

Using Exchange with PreSonus Sphere and Studio One

Want to capture the sound of other industry professionals? How about collaborate with a Grammy nominated artist?

With Exchange, you’re able to use presets and sounds from select PreSonus Artists in your own projects. Under the “Browse” section, you’ll also find thousands of downloadable assets from other Sphere Members, and the ability to upload your own unique sounds.

In this last episode, Jacob takes a look at the PreSonus Sphere Exchange tab and demonstrates how to import an Artist’s sound into your Studio One song session.

Join PreSonus Sphere today! Only $14.95 per month for Studio One Professional, Notion, and so much more.


Follow Jacob on Instagram

Exploring PreSonus Sphere Membership Products with Jacob Lamb

When you join PreSonus Sphere your membership comes with Studio One Professional, Notion plus the native software instruments, effects and plug-ins that PreSonus offers.

Studio One Professional is a powerful and intuitive DAW that works for you – made only more powerful by the full catalog of plugins – while Notion is an easy way to create full scores, sheet music for individual instruments, or guitar tabs and chord charts. Sphere members can also enjoy ongoing software upgrades when new versions are released.

In this Sphere episode, Jacob takes us through a demo of the “Products” tab, and all that is included.

Join PreSonus Sphere today! Only $14.95 per month for Studio One Professional, Notion, and so much more.


Follow Jacob on Instagram

Learning More in PreSonus Sphere with Jacob Lamb

With a PreSonus Sphere membership you get access to exclusive masterclasses in the “Learn” section.

Here you can dive into practical recording topics from industry professionals, covering recording tips, manipulating compression, perfecting EQ on a track, general mixing/mastering techniques, and more! Beyond the recording side, you can explore PreSonus Sphere product-specific videos like dialing in your guitar tone with Ampire, navigating Studio One and learning Notion.

In this episode, Jacob shows us the layout of the “Learn” tab, and how to navigate this “one stop shop” of classes.

Join PreSonus Sphere today! Only $14.95 per month for Studio One Professional, Notion, and so much more.


Follow Jacob on Instagram

No Downtime with Studio One and Yang Tan

Yang Tan is the Founder and Engineer for Absolute Magnitude Entertainment (AME) Records, based in Los Angeles, California.

Her client list includes: YG, Jackson Wang, Nipsey Hussle, Bia, Kris Wu, Migos, A$AP Ferg, J Cole, Kanye West, Maddi Jane and Kid Cudi… to name a few. Let’s find out more about this rising young creative who paints with sound, and also happens to be a PreSonus Sphere member—and a featured artist as well!


I am from Guangzhou, China, a metropolitan city close to Hong Kong where many imports and exports occur. As a child, I didn’t have the luxury of accessing music at the touch of my fingertips, like I do now. I remember going to secret spots on the weekends to pick out records among piles and piles of CDs with broken cases, which were smuggled in from overseas and were damaged by the customs. My mom had a Sony stereo set with a CD player and two cassette slots… it was pretty fancy in the ’90s. I was obsessed with recording my favorite songs to the cassette tapes. And then my mom bought a Walkman with recording ability through its built-in mic—I figured out how to play music in the background with my mom’s stereo and record bedtime stories I wrote. I paid for all of those CDs, but none of the profits went to the creators.

My family wanted me to follow in their footsteps and become a visual artist or a designer, but I was already obsessed with music. I always wanted to play the piano. So at the age of 16, I decided to pursue music secretly. I found two incredible music teachers on the Internet and started taking lessons, unbeknownst to my family. I learned how to read, play, and study music with strict and intense classical training. It was really difficult at the time because I didn’t know if anything would come from it, and I had to make money on the side to pay for the lessons. Looking back, I’m glad I took that risk. It was totally worth it. A year later, I was accepted to the Communication University of China, the best music and technology program in China, to study music. My music career began. 

The next part of my journey called for a relocation to the states, so I moved to Los Angeles after college. I started at Paramount Recording Studios and climbed the career ladder there. The learning never stops in Los Angeles; every day I pick up something new and practice until it becomes a habit. I am so inspired by the music culture in L.A., everyone I meet is just so talented, driven and inspiring. You don’t have to learn how to read music to be able to create music. How it sounds and how it connects with people is the most important part of the business.

 

 

 

 

The PreSonus audio products that I’ve been using are the StudioLive 16.0.2 digital mixer and their award-winning Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software Studio One Professional, which I mostly use for producing.

Its ease of use, flexibility and Macros are among the top features that led me to choose working creatively in this environment. Other DAWs usually require third-party software to program Macros, whereas with Studio One it is integrated natively as part of the DAW workflow itself.

Another particularly useful feature about Studio One that I find useful is the ARA integration (with Melodyne pitch correction) to the Studio One software engine. It saves so much time and I can edit vocal audio clips in real time at any stage of the process.

I love the quick-nudge capability inside of an audio clip. It’s a fast workflow and I don’t have to clean up the edit point or cross-fades every time I make an edit.

In short, Studio One flows really well, it’s quick and intuitive. No downtime for creativity. Truly amazing!


PreSonus Sphere Members: check out Yang Tan’s exclusive Vocal FX Chain Presets here

Visit her Website | Instagram