Customer Reviews

Creating Digital Music and Sound: An inspirational introduction for musicians, web designers, animators, videomakers, and game designers.

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No doubt there are a lot of people who get to the point where I was recently. They have an idea that they want to create digital music, but it isn't at all clear where to start. I only wish that I had bought this book *first* before making the plunge into buying equipment and tools and such. I would have done things differently, and it would have saved me a lot of money and frustration.

The book starts off with a really good (but brief) overview of sound concepts. Concepts like amplitude, phase, waves, sampling, bit-depth, and a lot more are explained. Then there is a chapter on computers where it talks about vital topics like: "how much computer do you need?", "what capabilities should your sound card have?". Then it starts broadening out into topics like connecting instruments and other peripherals to your computer and how to accomplish that. It includes diagrams and lots of pictures. There's also a nice section on MIDI, what that is, and how it should be integrated into your system. There is even a section on cabling, that includes nice pictures and explanations on the different cables that you are likely to run across. That is followed by a longer section on software, where it discusses different options and capabilities that you may want.

The second half of the book is dedicated to discussing different aspects of music creation. Things like podcasting, creating music for video, digital rights, and all sorts of other similar topics.

I really can't say enough good things about this book. It's the only one like it that I could find. It's pretty well up-to-date in terms of the latest peripherals and software products. And it puts all the relevant "getting started" types of topics together into one well written package. The book is filled to the brim of really high quality color photos of all the different software, hardware and evenything else that is discusses. And because the information is organized so well, this will occupy a spot on my bookshelf for a long time to come as a valuable reference.