Ben Hughes Sound
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Exciters are… well, you can guess
Whenever I’m producing, one of my primary aims is to make sure each element has its own unique place in the mix. This can be partially accomplished by the use of EQ – adjusting the balance of frequencies present in a recording. By strategically cutting and boosting certain frequencies, the important characteristics of a sound…
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Who said acoustic guitar shouldn’t be distorted?
Who said acoustic guitar shouldn’t be distorted? And I don’t mean as some strange and unusual effect to differentiate a punk song from the rest, or to satisfy the destructive experimentalist in us all. I mean plain old acoustic and vocals – the proverbial singer-songwriter with “a voice, an instrument, three chords and the truth”…
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Working At Speed – Nora by Julian Blackshaw
Recently I had the pleasure of working with local Cardiff based artist Julian Blackshaw. Blackshaw’s been a fixture of the Cardiff open mic/music scene for the last few years, writing prolifically all the while, but up until now he hasn’t made the jump to recording and releasing a big project. He contacted me about a…
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Spicy Chords – Diminished
Most of the time when I’m writing music, the chords are my starting point. With a chord progression alone you could almost build an entire piece of music – everything else is essentially just trimmings.That may be something of an exaggeration, the point that chord progressions are important still stands, and they are a very…
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There’s a Time and a Place For Screaming
It’s probably fair to say that there are a lot of people aren’t particularly keen on screaming in music. That’s fine, to each their own. However, sometimes it’s possible to use screaming as a textural device to help enhance the energy of a track, without making the music hard to swallow.
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Give the new “Scissorkick Victory” EP a listen
At some point last year I worked with Cardiff based Punk band Scissorkick Victory on some tracks which have just been released as the ‘Literally Serious’ EP, check it out on Spotify here now! This was probably the most fun I’ve ever had on a session. We set up the drummer in one room, the…
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Check out ‘Violent Hearts’ new EP
I had the great pleasure of working with a self described ‘Country/folk acoustic rock trio’ Violent Hearts earlier this year on a live(ish) four track EP, and they released it today! Check it out here for free: https://violenthearts.bandcamp.com/album/shake-with-fear To best capture their live sound at the time I decided to set them all up in a…
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A live gig descends into Karaoke
I recently had the monumental task of playing a three hour gig of covers for a party back in Cheltenham, as well as hiring out the PA to enable karaoke, backing music, and general merriment. As well as being good fun I can honestly say it was one of the strangest gigs of my life,…
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Ben Hughes Sound 