Books on Recording

[mattmiranda01]

I want to get a good, easy to read book about home studio recording. Does anyone have any suggestions?

[ludwig_van]

This deals mainly with mixing and not much about tracking, but I really liked the Mixing Engineer's Handbook, Second Edition, by Bobby Owsinski.

[chovie d]

I bought Mixing with Your Mind by Michael Starvou. It was expensive and I had to order it from Australia. Theres alot of good stuff in there but theres also, for me at least, alot of very impractical stuff. At one point he suggests having an assistant walk around the room with a monitor tied to a string to find where it sounds best on the room...um, not gonna happen. There all this stuff about using a "pink noise" generator..again, not happening in my bedroom. I guess the book is more for pro studios maybe.

so um, that doesnt offer a good suggestion as to what to get, but maybe eliminates one possible choice. i dont wanna slag the book, its good and all, just not geared towards the home recordist.

the tapeOp book is pretty cool.
Im interested to hear other peoples suggestions as well.

[apropos of nothing]

Katz' "Mastering Audio" is the only book I've ever read about the particulars of digital audio that was worth a damn.

[mattmiranda01]

i'm looking for something that takes you through the whole process of making a demo, ie tracking, mixing, and mastering. i've got a kind of wierd setup: i track on tape but do most of the mixing on computer.

[yardleyone]

There is always the musicians guide to home recording. Some of it is kinda outdated in that it's not going to tell you much about te functionality of a DAW, but as far as basic principles i think it's a good overview.

[sfsonarboy]

+1 for Katz's Mastering Audio...

Katz' "Mastering Audio" is the only book I've ever read about the particulars of digital audio that was worth a damn.

[Kevin Kitchel]

Master Handbook of Acoustics and Principles of Digital Audio are awesome for my inner bookworm. The Yamaha Live Sound book is a great reference, but all of that info is probably available online, if not in this messageboard.

I am interested in the Katz book too.

[longfade]

Computer Music magazine might be worth checking out; they have detailed articles stepping you through all kinds of stuff. One I looked at recently (old issue) had a thing on building a complete song, from the initial writing phase all the way through mastering. Just an idea.

[supersockmonkey]

+2 for Katz. Helped me out quite a bit. The Recording Techniques threads are great for all kinds of info and its free. Thanks guys

[JWL]

I don't think there is one magic book on how to record. All of them will have some good stuff, and some useless stuff, and everyone will disagree about which is which.

Pick up a couple, read them, fill your mind.

But above all, start recording. Find out what works for you and what doesn't. No matter how much you read, you WILL make mistakes. Learn from those, and keep improving.

That said I found the above books good (Katz and Owsinski).

I also like the following webpages:

http://www.theprojectstudiohandbook.com/directory.htm
http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html
http://badmuckingfastard.com/sound/slipperman.html
http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/articles.asp
http://www.wikirecording.org/
http://www.danalexanderaudio.com/glynjohns.htm
http://www.audiomelody.com/1/articles/h ... om_scratch
http://home.earthlink.net/~prof.sound/

[CraigM]

Modern Recording Techniques is pretty decent. I think they're on a 6th edition now.