8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent guide for musicians on creating digital audio content, April 21, 2007
This review is from: Real World Digital Audio (Paperback)
This is a book for musicians who need to understand the science of sound as well as the principles of digital music production including equipment, computers, and software. There is even an entire chapter dedicated to MIDI. If you are a musician who is interested in getting involved in computer music, this is a great place to start learning as well as getting your hands dirty with the actual business of creating digital music.
Chapter 1. Understanding Digital Sound - Covers the basic physical concepts of analog sound - the sine wave, pitch, amplitude, and perception. Next the book discusses how these concepts translate into digital form.
Chapter 2. Choosing Your Tools - Surveys the available hardware and software you'll need to produce digital audio. Included are photos of typical devices, their uses, their price ranges, and examples of some name-brand products. This section even tells you how to select a computer that is best for your needs.
Chapter 3. Setting Up Your Equipment - Discusses all aspects of connecting the physical hardware you selected in chapter two. This includes a discussion of the desirable acoustic properties of the room you'll be using for your studio.
Chapter 4. Preparing Your Computer for Audio - Discusses setting up your computer to optimize your audio productivity. This chapter gives detailed instructions on the installation and configuration of drivers and plug-ins, copy protection schemes, disk storage space, operating system optimization, and other tips on making a computer most efficient for the production of digital music.
Chapter 5. Quick Songs with Patterns and Loops - Shows you how to quickly and easily turn your ideas into music using Kinetic and GarageBand's pre-built musical components.
Chapter 6. Recording Instruments and Sound - This chapter is all about the different types of microphones and how they work. Discusses microphone characteristics and what types of sound they are best at capturing, how they affect sound coming from various directions, strategies for placing your microphones at various distances and in various arrangements. Also shown are microphone strategies for different instruments and the use of Audacity and Ableton Live, which is recording software included on the DVD.
Chapter 7. Processing and Effects - Without getting over-technical(i.e. mathematical), this section discusses the various effects you'll need to know about to complete most digital audio projects. The chapter begins discussing what signal processors are and then goes on to explain equalization, dynamics processors, time-related effects such as delay and reverb, and specialized processors such as distortion and modulation.
Chapter 8. MIDI: Notes, Rhythms, and Physical Control - Discusses how MIDI enables you to express digital music in a form that seems natural to musicians. The chapter discusses when to use MIDI, how to connect MIDI devices, MIDI's data structure and messaging system, and how to put everything together so that you can use MIDI to create a song.
Chapter 9. Synthesis and Software Instruments - This chapter concerns turning your computer and its software into various musical instruments. You learn how to work with prefabricated sounds, analog waveshapes and their sounds, and how to use envelopes, modulation, and different effects to produce more interesting sounds.
Chapter 10. Put It Together: Arrange, Mix, and Master - This chapter takes the material from the previous nine and shows you how to arrange and assemble a complete composition, including mixing, so that you have something professional sounding that is ready for distribution, which is also discussed.
Chapter 11. Producing Printed Scores - Goes into detail about producing a score. Shows how to choose the right notation software, using quick-start features and templates, how to input your notes to your score either via keyboard, MIDI, scanning, or pure audio, assembling and replaying your score, and finally sharing your results with others. Sibelius and Finale are among the software packages featured.
Chapter 12. Music and Sound for Video - Builds on what you have learned about digital audio and shows you how to synchronize that audio to video. You'll learn about adjusting cues to fit the video, measuring time in frames, recording sound for easy synchronization, and recording dialog.
Chapter 13. Playing Live - This chapter includes discussions on the live arranging of music and DJing your live arrangements. The actual software used is discussed in some detail.
The DVD contains over two gigabytes of sound content, instruments, and software tools. Included are Ableton Live, Audacity, a 30-day demo version of Cakewalk Kinetic, a full version of IK Multimedia AmpliTube UNO, MIDI management utilities, and a collection of free plug-in and standalone instruments and effects for Mac and Windows.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
John Goforth, President; Covered Bridge Records, October 18, 2007
This review is from: Real World Digital Audio (Paperback)
Many of us out here have been working with and around audio for many years. As well, most of us have resisted the "I/O" demon, ha! After updating my equipment, a little at a time, I found myself in the digital domain; like it or not.
Upon review of this book "Real World Digital Audio" in EQ Magazine, I immediately purchased it, and got what I asked for; more work. Good work however, in that the author placed me in the driver's seat, gave me an easy to understand road map (I brought the cheetos)and it's been just great! Something I can use to honestly understand where I'm at with newer and evolving technologies, and put them to work in a positive and productive manner.
Bravo!
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