If you're reading this book, then making music is an important part of your life. Furthermore, whether you're making music just to have fun or to pursue a serious interest, you would like to get into home recording. Where do you start? Maybe you've gone to a music store and left more confused than when you walked in. All those choices! Analog versus digital, microphones, cables, rack gear, microphone preamplifiers, mixing boards, computer interfaces, recording software, MIDI … the list goes on and on. Even worse, you may have picked up a book on home recording and on page six read about hi passing 200Hz to eliminate some rumble from a bass-heavy cardioid microphone to battle proximity effect. Proximity … what? Maybe all those terms were scary, with so little real-world instruction on where to start and what to do.
The Everything® Guide to Digital Home Recording is written for someone who has little or no experience in the field of recording. The only prerequisite? Having music in your soul that you wish to record. That's all. This book is designed to take you through digital home recording step by step. From getting the gear to setting it up and recording properly, you don't need a technical background to use this book successfully. If you're somewhat familiar with recording, you may want to skip directly to some of the meatier chapters later in the book. Even so, you might want to look through each chapter to make sure you haven't missed anything vital.
The field of recording is rooted in math and physics, so there's no denying the academic link and why it's important. There's no way to avoid talking about hertz and kilohertz, just as there's no way around decibels and ratios. That's because we have the daunting task of explaining sound. Warm, muddy, clear, and boomy are all terms to explain characteristics of sounds; so are 20Hz and 10kHz. Don't be scared of the math side of things; it's just one way of looking at it. You'll be pleased to find that this book explains both sides of the fence: some theory and a lot of application. No one learns this in a vacuum. No matter how many books you read, or how much physics you understand, there is no substitute for twiddling knobs to see what happens. That's really the only way to learn. Special attention is paid to the common mistakes beginners make. Topics like which microphones to use and setting proper input levels are covered in great detail here. While these topics might not be as glamorous as getting that Pink Floyd sound, these are the foundations of your recordings.
This book gives you clear information on where to start and how to sharpen your skills. But your experimentation and drive to create will teach you more than any text. Get ready to learn just about “everything” about home studio recording! Let's go!