Customer Reviews

Roger McGuinn's Guide To Home Recording on a Computer

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This DVD is for somebody first considering the plunge into digital recording, or somebody who's already bought multitrack software and found it daunting. (That's me.) Don't buy this DVD if you're Jeff Lynne, or if you think you are.

After a snappy and promising introduction, McGuinn fires up the Cool Edit Pro program, picks up his signature Martin 12-string, and lays down a rhythm track. It takes three minutes and change, and we watch the whole thing, with extended close-ups of his picking hand, his chording hand, and Cool Edit Pro counting milliseconds one by one. A thousand things McGuinn can play warrant this sort of inspection, but not the simple guitar part to the lovely "May the Road Rise to Meet You", and one wonders what the editor was thinking. Happily this is the only substantial misstep.

The training session regains its rhythm as McGuinn layers vocal tracks, and what is more interesting, makes a mistake. He expertly chops a few words of a flubbed lyric out of one track and creates a new track segment with the right words, all in a matter of seconds. The result is seamless.

All with speed that will surprise those who haven't seen this sort of thing before, McGuinn records tracks, adds reverb, deletes noise, creates fades, and mixes the song down to stereo.

Along the way we get an excellent tour of his hardware and software, all available off the shelf with the exception Cool Edit Pro, which became Adobe Audition a couple of years ago. However, everything he says about Cool Edit Pro seems to apply to the current Audition.

While we do not again sit through the playing of a full track after that first one, I would've been happy to hear the finished multitrack song polished to McGuinn's satisfaction.

A promotional piece for Dell included as a bonus covers much of the same ground, and serves to show what the DVD could have been with more able and assertive editing and direction.

But any quibbles about the production are outweighed by the quantity of information it conveys. The second time you watch this, you'll want to take notes.

It's rare to see a rock superstar doing an instructional video, let alone one on digital recording. I have engineered for over 30 years and picked up some tips from this, even though it's geared for the beginner. It's a real treat to see McGuinn assemble a song track by track. His voice is amazing after all these years. If you enjoy The Byrds, folk rock, or just want to learn about digital audio recording, this is priceless. Better hurry, because it seems they don't keep things like this in print forever and this shouldn't be missed.

If you are totally new to recording with a pc this DVD is brilliant! Its a few years old and the software he uses has changed (cool edit is now adobe audition), in fact this is really good because you can download a program for free called "audacity" which is almost identical to the old Cool edit, (adobe audition will have more modern features but these are not necessary for a beginner)

check out his website too!

This dvd "Roger McGuinn's Guide To Home Recording On A Computer" is very informative and well worth the money. Roger shows you firsthand how to record to a laptop or desktop using recording software in this case Cool Edit now Adobe Audition. You can replace the software with whichever version you prefer be it Pro Tools or Cubase and etc. but the lessons learned by Roger is what you will find to be an eye opener especially if you are new to recording.

The old saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" is evident here as you see for example Roger do the vocal "double up" to make the vocal more full. Watching Him do the vocal harmonies and seeing Him fix an error on the lyric by "punching in" the correct part.

So much more than words can describe the best part though is watching and hearing Roger McGuinn the Folk Rock legend give you pointers as if he were an old friend in your living room.

Well worth the cost of the dvd ! You will learn something from this dvd and have fun doing it.