Customer Reviews

Pro Tools All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've been working with Pro Tools LE on a Digi 002 for a few weeks. I never took any classes on the software, so it's been slow going. I saw this book and bought it last week. It cleared up a lot of stuff I didn't understand about Pro Tools and now I'm working a lot faster. There's also some pretty good general recording tips I didn't know. Good book. Well worth the price.

I've been a ProTools user for a few years (Digi 001 and now Digi 002 with ProTools 7 LE), but never took any courses or purchased any courseware. I could do basic tracking, but when it came time for my first large CD project I knew I needed help. Although the tutorial DVD that comes with ProTools 7 LE has some great material in it, the manuals never really seemed to answer my questions.
This book was invaluable in taking the step from "basic user" to semi-pro user. It's well written in a direct and friendly tone with anecdotes that show how the author has "been there too" and shares a musician's perspective on recording.
From understanding microphones and setting up a small studio through recording and even into mastering, this book is an invaluable reference for anyone who is ready to get beyond the basics. It covers step-by-step processes for many common tasks and provides some background on why things are the way they are - which leads to better user comprehension. Not only can you perform the task, but you also have a better understanding of why it is done the way it is.

I have some working knowledge of protools but can't find answers to most of my questions in this book. The index is probably the most useless part--this book tells me all about what certain functions are, but nothing about how to use them. Waste of money.

This is a "reference" book in the truest sense of the word. Most of the material doesn't tell you how to accomplish sequential tasks, many times you have to look in other sections of the book to get all of the information you need. Index is poor. Descriptions of specific functions of the software are fairly good.

This is a good book if you are looking for sort of a tutorial on what ProTools does and how it works. However, it is not good as a reference manual.

A huge book, but I found it very lacking. If you have a question, it might be in here, but I never found answers to most of mine. Almost impossible as a guide to anyone who doesn't already know a lot about Pro Tools. Very disappointed.

Since ProTools didn't seem to come with any manual other than a DVD of tutorials, this book is the next best thing. It should come bundled with the software & ProTools interface box.

I'm a big fan of the "for dummies" books, and this one is no exception.
Extremely easy to read and understand. Just how it needs to be!

This book was an extreme help to me. I am very inexperienced in music production, and I bought this book, hoping to learn more about pro tools and the studio. After reading it, I have a much better understanding of it all. It was easy to read through, informative, and cheap! This book is very helpful, and you get a good bang for your buck.

Excellent Book. Lots of great tips and hints. Well laid out. Walks you through building a home recording studio from beginning to end. I would recommend this to anyone that wants to start recording/making music.

I read through almost 300 pages of this book, and i still didn't know how to plug in a mic and record a track. Am I stupid? Then a book for dummies should be perfect for me! But this one is too sketchy and too poorly organized. Way too many incidences of "look at Book X, Chapter Y to learn more." It doesn't even give page numbers! So you're in the middle of trying to understand how to do something complicated that you've never done before, in a language that's new to you, and the book sends you off looking for details that you may or may not have remembered from 100 pages ago, without even telling you exactly where to look. To make matters worse, even when you go back and look, in many cases you don't really get the answer you're looking for (namely, how do I do a specific basic task in Pro Tools!?!?!)

Part of the problem lies with Pro Tools itself, which is too powerful and complicated to be the best choice for most home/project studios. Part of it is the number of different hardware choices available, which complicates instruction somewhat. But really, that shouldn't matter too too much, because the software is very consistently applied. The main problem is that the book is not really an instructional guide for beginners, or really even a comprehensive reference guide (there are very few screen shots or illustrations, for example, and the ones that exist are in many cases grainy, or not well captioned, or all too often, both). It is a decent explication of what Pro Tools can do; just not necessarily how to do it.

One more problem: this book is simply not written from a pragmatic point of view. Too much about how to size track windows and use effects loops, not enough about how to actually plug in a mic, enable it for input, and start recording. No troubleshooting information, either.

If you want the right book to get started, try "Pro Tools for Musicians and Songwriters." It's slightly out of date (7.0), but lays out basic concepts and instructions in easy to follow exercises. It even provides downloadable loops for use in the exercises.