Secrets of Recording: Professional Tips, Tools & Techniques (The Mastering Music Series)

• Publisher:   Focal Press
• Number Of Pages:   232
• Publication Date:   2009-01-07
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   0240811275
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9780240811277

Packed with studio tips and professional tricks and more than 200 illustrations, Secrets of Recording by Lorne Bregitzer makes it easier than ever to create pro-quality music at home. This book is the only reference you will ever need to start producing and engineering your music, or other artists' music, in your own home studio. Covering less than ideal acoustics, solving problems before they occur, tools of the editing phase, and much more, you can gain the knowledge and know-how to make your recordings sound like pro recordings -- understand the technology, use it in the right way and you can make a good recording great. . Reveals the "engineering secrets" used by the top producers, exposes the hidden skills of music production . Make good sound great, by understanding the technology, using it properly and applying professional techniques . For the home studio setup, be creative & resourceful and achieve great results- without professional resources!

While I enjoyed this book and thought it was well written, I didn't get a lot out of it as someone who has some experience with recording already. For the novice, this book is an excellent tool to help you learn the fundamentals and some very helpful "tricks" to get the most out of your recording experience. Much like a previous reviewer, I thought there would be more information given about mic placement and EQ'ing, mainly because of the picture on the cover. You know what they say about judging a book by it's cover, though so it serves me right. If you are just getting started with making your own music and recording it yourself, I recommend you get all the books in the "Secrets of Recording" series. For a beginner, I would rate this book 5 stars. For an intermediate or advanced recording engineer, there isn't really a lot of new info and I'd rate it around 3 stars. Still, the book is written well and I highly recommend it.

The last few years have seen great advances for musicians who record at home. Computer-based software and home digital recorders have made it possible for consumers to produce great-sounding CDs without huge studio bills. SECRETS OF RECORDING, written by recording engineer Lorne Bregitzer, is a nice reference work for those users who wish to demystify the digital recording process. Software Help files often assume that users have done this before, which can get frustrating. And owners of stand-alone digital recorders have complained loudly about owner's manuals that are written by people to whom English is a second language. So, a book such as this is an essential purchase. The chapters are presented in a "first things first" manner, covering basic processes early, then getting into more detail later. Timing Correction, Replacing Sounds, Pitch Correction, FX, MIDI, Mixing and Mastering all get their own chapters. It's true that such old-school information as mic placement is left out, but, by Bregitzer's own admission, SECRETS OF RECORDING is meant to begin where conventional recording guides leave off. Moreover, all of the basic information one would need is readily available elsewhere. This book is well-illustrated and written to be as comprehensible as possible. It even addresses that nagging question about digital technique: is it cheating? The answers may surprise you. I recommend this book whether you are using software such as Pro Tools (I use Cakewalk) or a stand-alone recorder such as my Fostex unit. BUT: musicians who hate digital- and they are still numerous- should probably avoid even a casual look.

I am an amateur musician with a very new, very amateur home studio. While this book gives great insight into the work of more sophisticated studios than almost anyone will have access to, the problems addressed are widely shared. This has helped me more by explaining the core of the problems I've been encountering and also some problems which I failed to realize WERE problems with serious consequences. This is the good of the book. The bad of the book is that the solutions proposed apply only to those who are very well funded. Still, by giving me an understanding of the terminolgy of the recording engineer, it has indirectly helped me seek out and discover affordable, workable solutions on the web. It has been fully worthwhile in that context. Unlike others, I found the material on editing percussion tracks some of the most accessible and useful. That, alone, was worth the price of this book. Organization, illustration and clarity of explanation in this book is excellent -- one of the best jobs I've seen in years. I wish the author would write a book for amateurs trying to have fun and get it done on a meager budget. I withheld the fifth star only because hundreds of thousands of folks are home recording, but only about ten or twenty thousand have the kind of budget presumed by the author of this OUTSTANDING book.

I bought this book hoping that it would have some depth on the topic of in-studio microphone placement, micing technique and microphone selection. Since the cover of the book shows a microphone, I made the assumption that this would be information well-covered in the book. The book provided essentially nothing in that regard. So for me the book was a disappointment. However, even looking at the book without my specific needs in mind, it is still limiting in its usefulness since it focuses on a specific set of software based solutions and if you don't have the same software, you'll only be getting general concepts instead of 100% useful information. The information, as it is presented, is written knowledgeably, but for some the book will not suffice. This is a short review because I don't have much else to say. It didn't meet my needs but it may meet yours. I'd strongly suggest flipping through the pages to see if it's what you need or not before buying.

If you're looking, as I was, for a good general purpose handbook on recording music- this isn't it. Despite the publisher's blurb ("This book is the only reference you will ever need to start producing and engineering your music, or other artists' music, in your own home studio") this book is missing large chunks of what I would consider essential information for anyone seeking to record music. For example, there's not one word on microphone placement- an amazing omission in a book that claims to be "the only reference you'll ever need". The section on monitors is only a few paragraphs long, and suggests that you use sound level meters to measure output at just three frequencies (100Hz, 1KHz, 10Khz) and then put a parametric EQ in the signal path- and then goes on to say you can just use your own ears. This is not the way to get good, repeatable results, especially if you'll be recording and mixing in different studios. And measuring output at just three frequencies is hardly enough to assure flat response. A better title for this book would probably be "A recording engineer's guide to working with ProTools and plugins", as that's really what the bulk of the book discusses. Just about every technique discussed is done so in the context of the author's favorite plugin to accomplish the task. Similarly, if (like me) you're using software other than ProTools, you're a bit out of luck in trying to accomplish a lot of what the author is trying to demonstrate. If you *are* using ProTools, and you have the author's favorite plugins (ReDrum, Beat Detective, etc.) this would be a handy reference used in combination with other materials in order to learn how to accomplish various effects involving comprpession, pitch shift and so forth. But as a basic recording handbook, nope. If you're a musician looking to start recording your own demos or CDs for release at home, I'd suggest Roger McGuinn's Guide To Home Recording on a Computer. It's written by a musician for musicians, and deals with the basics rather than a lot of expensive plugins and complex effects.

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