Get the most out of Digidesign's Pro Tools software with this comprehensive home studio guide that will show you how to create the highest quality recordings by honing your production skills and engineering techniques. With a complete explanation of the entire production process, you'll find out everything you need to know to make your music projects stand out from the rest. You'll learn how to: mix and master recordings like the pros; run a recording session and produce great songs; set up your home studio and improve its efficiency; set up mics to capture superior sounds; master the intricacies of Pro Tools with keystroke shortcuts and technical instruction; record real-sounding MIDI tracks; and much more. Ideal for producers, engineers, songwriters and artists. The Second Edition is fully updated for the new features of Pro Tools 6.X software and all Digidesign home studio hardware products. A new chapter on Digital Audio Editing was added to the book, and new hands-on projects have been added in every chapter. Additionally, there are new, more advanced Pro Tools sessions with audio examples that explain many in-demand Pro Tools techniques.

From our CD collections to iPods bursting with MP3s to the hallowed vinyl of DJs, recordings are the most common way we experience music. Perfecting Sound Forever tells the story of recorded music, introducing us to the innovators, musicians and producers who have affected the way we hear our favourite songs, from Thomas Edison to Phil Spector. Exploring the balance that recordings strike between the real and the represented, Greg Milner asks the questions which have divided sound recorders for the past century: should a recording document reality as faithfully as possible, or should it improve upon or somehow transcend the music it records? What does the perfect record sound like? The answers he uncovers will change the way we think about music.

Sound for Film and Television, Third Edition provides a thorough introduction to the fascinating field of recording, editing, mixing, and exhibiting film and television sound. It strikes a fine balance between aesthetic and technical content, combining theory and practice to approach sound as both an art and a science. This new edition has been completely updated to reflect the latest advances in HD technology, new hardware and software systems, new distribution methods, wireless sound capture, and more. Also, analog-related content has been reduced and transferred to the chapters covering historical techniques. Sections on troubleshooting and FAQs have been added to help you avoid common pitfalls in sound production.

Written by one of Hollywood's leading sound experts, Sound for Film and Television provides a solid grounding in all aspects of the sound process. Basic principles are presented with illustrations demonstrating how they affect the day-to-day activities on a film or television set, in the editing room, and in the mix room.

The accompanying audio downloadable resources contain more than 50 tracks that demonstrate practical, real-world examples of key concepts presented in the book.

A companion Web site provides further resources and information:

www.focalpress.com/cw/holman-9780240813301/

Please use the access code located in the beginning of the book to register for access to the Web site.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Third Edition

Introduction

Chapter 1 Objective Sound

Chapter 2 Psychoacoustics

Chapter 3 Audio Fundamentals

Chapter 4 Capturing Sound

Chapter 5 Microphone Technicalities

Chapter 6 Handling the Output of Microphones

Chapter 7 Production Sound Mixing

Chapter 8 Sync, Sank, Sunk

Chapter 9 Transfers

Chapter 10 Sound Design

Chapter 11 Editing

Chapter 12 Mixing

Chapter 13 From Print Masters to Exploitation

Appendix I Working with Decibels

Appendix II Filmography

Appendix III The Eleven Commandments of Film Sound

Appendix IV Bibliography

Glossary

Index

About the Author

The Companion Website

Instructions for the Accompanying DVD

In this comprehensive guide, Brixen takes the reader through the complex and confusing aspects of audio metering, imparting the knowledge and skills needed to utilize optional signal levels and produce high-quality audio. Covering all aspects of this fundamental subject, Audio Metering: Measurements, Standards and Practice begins with the basics, such as audio definitions and digital techniques, and works up to more complex topics like hearing and psychoacoustics. This revised and expanded third edition includes: Updated information on loudness metering, covering both existing and new standards. Definitions of terms such as LKFS, LUFS, gating, LRA. Explanations of signal types and musical sounds and structures. Further details on immersive audio. Skills needed for both small-room acoustics and large auditorium sound design without loss of sound quality. Descriptions of measurement signals and systems for audio and acoustic sound. A chapter on listening tests from small set-ups to large-scale comparisons of PA/SR-systems. Packed full of valuable information with a wide range of practical applications, this is the essential reference guide to audio metering for technicians, engineers, and tonmeisters, as well as sound designers working with acoustics, electroacoustics, broadcast, studio recording, sound art, archiving, audio forensics, and theatrical and live-audio setups.

This classic work has inspired and informed a whole generation of artists and technicians working in all branches of the audio industry. Now in its seventh edition, The Sound Studio has been thoroughly revised to encompass the rapidly expanding range of possibilities offered by today's digital equipment. It now covers: the virtual studio; 5.1 surround sound; hard drive mixers and multichannel recorders; DVD and CD-RW.
Alec Nisbett provides encyclopaedic coverage of everything from acoustics, microphones and loudspeakers, to editing, mixing and sound effects, as well as a comprehensive glossary.
Through its six previous editions, The Sound Studio has been used for over 40 years as a standard work of reference on audio techniques. For a new generation, it links all the best techniques back to their roots: the unchanging guiding principles that have long been observed over a wide range of related media and crafts.
The Sound Studio is intended for anyone with a creative or technical interest in sound - for radio, television, film and music recording - but has particularly strong coverage of audio in broadcasting, reflecting the author's prolific career.
* Provides encyclopaedic information on audio techniques - essential for both the audio practitioner and student
* Covers the philosophy behind the techniques - answering the question 'why' as well as 'how'
* Includes details on the latest digital audio computer-editing systems

Modern MIDI equips you with everything you need to use MIDI in your music productions. With a particular focus on practical application and step-by-step explanations, this book does far more than tell you about how MIDI works. Simple explanations and real-world scenarios encourage you to test out the techniques for yourself. The second edition of Modern MIDI builds on the first, making sequencing approachable for absolute beginners, reinforcing the fundamentals of MIDI and expanding the coverage into new mobile technology and vintage gear. Modern MIDI is essential reading for beginners from all backgrounds, including students and professionals, as well as experienced users looking to develop their existing setups.

Dan Alexander Audio reveals the origins and history of vintage recording gear, told by the man who coined the term. It discusses the products of 22 manufacturers, illustrated with over 450 never-before-published photographs in full-color and reprints of original manufacturers' sales brochures from the author's collection. This book features: A list of over 7,500 pieces of vintage gear Dan Alexander sold from 1979 until 2000, including prices, serial numbers, and buyer A complete list of microphone types distributed by Telefunken from 1928 until 1980, including technical information on mics by Neumann, Akg, Schoeps, Rft, and Geffel A complete list of Trident A and B range console 40 pages on Neve modules and consoles Helios product information and photographs information sourced from Dick Swettenhams' personal sales binder.

Digital Sampling is the first book about the design and use of sampling technologies that have shaped the sounds of popular music since the 1980s. Written in two parts, Digital Sampling begins with an exploration of the Fairlight CMI and how artists like Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel used it to sample the sounds of everyday life. It also focuses on E-mu Systems and the use of its keyboards and drum machines in hip-hop. The second part follows users across a range of musical worlds, including US/UK garage, indie folk music, and electronic music made from the sounds of sewers, war zones, and crematoriums. Using material from interviews and concepts from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), Digital Sampling provides a new and alternative approach to the study of sampling and is crucial reading for undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers from a wide range of disciplines, including music technology, media, communication, and cultural studies.

Audio Mastering: The Artists collects more than twenty interviews, drawn from more than 60 hours of discussions, with many of the world's leading mastering engineers. In these exclusive and often intimate interviews, engineers consider the audio mastering process as they, themselves, experience and shape it as the leading artists in their field. Each interview covers how engineers got started in the recording industry, what prompted them to pursue mastering, how they learned about the process, which tools and techniques they routinely use when they work, and a host of other particulars of their crafts. We also spoke with mix engineers, and craftsmen responsible for some of the more iconic mastering tools now on the market, to gain a broader perspective on their work. This book is the first to provide such a comprehensive overview of the audio mastering process told from the point-of-view of the artists who engage in it. In so doing, it pulls the curtain back on a crucial, but seldom heard from, agency in record production at large.

It was a time when music fans copied and traded recordings without permission. An outraged music industry pushed Congress to pass anti-piracy legislation. Yes, that time is now; it was also the era of Napster in the 1990s, of cassette tapes in the 1970s, of reel-to-reel tapes in the 1950s, even the phonograph epoch of the 1930s. Piracy, it turns out, is as old as recorded music itself. In Democracy of Sound, Alex Sayf Cummings uncovers the little-known history of music piracy and its sweeping effects on the definition of copyright in the United States. When copyright emerged, only visual material such as books and maps were thought to deserve protection; even musical compositions were not included until 1831. Once a performance could be captured on a wax cylinder or vinyl disc, profound questions arose over the meaning of intellectual property. Is only a written composition defined as a piece of art? If a singer performs a different interpretation of a song, is it a new and distinct work? Such questions have only grown more pressing with the rise of sampling and other forms of musical pastiche. Indeed, music has become the prime battleground between piracy and copyright. It is compact, making it easy to copy. And it is highly social, shared or traded through social networks-often networks that arise around music itself. But such networks also pose a counter-argument: as channels for copying and sharing sounds, they were instrumental in nourishing hip-hop and other new forms of music central to American culture today. Piracy is not always a bad thing. An insightful and often entertaining look at the history of music piracy, Democracy of Sound offers invaluable background to one of the hot-button issues involving creativity and the law.

In this book, Barbara Ellison and Thomas B. W. Bailey lay out and explore the mystifying and evanescent musical territory of 'sonic phantoms': auditory illusions within the musical material that convey a 'phantasmatic' presence. Structured around a large body of compositional work developed by Ellison over the past decade, sonic phantoms are revealed and illustrated as they arise through a diverse array of musical sources, materials, techniques, and compositional tools: voices (real and synthetic), field recordings, instrument manipulation, object amplification, improvisation, and recording studio techniques. Somehow inherent in all music--and perhaps in all sound--sonic phantoms lurk and stalk with the promise of mystery and elevation. We just need to conjure them.

Music and the Broadcast Experience explores the complex ways in which music and broadcasting have developed together throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries. It brings into dialogue researchers working in media and music studies; explores and develops crucial points of contact between studies of music in radio and music in television; and investigates the limits, persistence, and extensions of music broadcasting in the Internet era. The book presents a series of case studies that address key moments and concerns in music broadcasting, past and present, written by leading scholars in the field, who hail from both media and music studies. Unified by attentiveness both to musical sound and meaning and to broadcasting structures, practices, audiences, and discourses, the chapters in this collection address the following topics: the role of live orchestral concerts and opera in the early development of radio and their relation to ideologies of musical uplift; the relation between production culture, music, and television genre; the function of music in sponsored radio during the 1930s; the fortunes of musical celebrity and artistic ambition on television; questions of music format and political economy in the development of online radio; and the negotiation of space, community, and participation among audiences, online and offline, in the early twenty-first century. The collection's ultimate aim is to explore the usefulness and limitations of broadcasting as a concept for understanding music and its cultural role, both historically and today.

Istanbul is home to a multimillion dollar transnational music industry, which every year produces thousands of digital music recordings, including widely distributed film and television show soundtracks. Today, this centralized industry is responding to a growing global demand for Turkish, Kurdish, and other Anatolian ethnic language productions, and every year, many of its top-selling records incorporate elaborately orchestrated arrangements of rural folksongs. What accounts for the continuing demand for traditional music in local and diasporic markets? How is tradition produced in twenty-first century digital recording studios, and is there a "digital aesthetics" to contemporary recordings of traditional music? In Digital Traditions: Arrangement and Labor in Istanbul's Recording Studio Culture, author Eliot Bates answers these questions and more with a case study into the contemporary practices of recording traditional music in Istanbul. Bates provides an ethnography of Turkish recording studios, of arrangers and engineers, studio musicianship and digital audio workstation kinesthetics. Digital Traditions investigates the moments when tradition is arranged, and how arrangement is simultaneously a set of technological capabilities, limitations and choices: a form of musical practice that desocializes the ensemble and generates an extended network of social relations, resulting in aesthetic art objects that come to be associated with a range of affective and symbolic meanings. Rich with visual analysis and drawing on Science & Technology Studies theories and methods, Digital Tradition sets a new standard for the study of recorded music. Scholars and general readers of ethnomusicology, Middle Eastern studies, folklore and science and technology studies are sure to find Digital Traditions an essential addition to their library.

Download chronicles of the making of the new record industry, from the boom years of the CD revolution of the late 1980s to the crisis of the present day, with particular stress on the last decade. It follows the actions and reactions of the major international record companies, five at the beginning of the story, now four, as they ploughed their way through the digital slough of despond, bewildered by the fleet-of-foot digital innovators far more responsive to the changing marketing conditions through which (recorded) music was consumed and valued. These all have their significant place in Download but the real story is the structural change that has, almost surreptitiously, taken place, within the music business. This change, for reasons author Phil Hardy will explain in detail, has left the captains of the record industry as unable to act as they were unwilling to act. In effect they became little but very well paid observers of the shrinking of their domains.

Written by an active composer, performer and educator, Sonic Art: An Introduction to Electroacoustic Music Composition provides a clear and informative introduction to the compositional techniques behind electroacoustic music. It brings together theory, aesthetics, context and practical applications to allow students to start thinking about sound creatively, and gives them the tools to compose meaningful sonic art works. In addition to explaining the techniques and philosophies of sonic art, the book examines over forty composers and their works, introducing the history and context of notable pieces, and includes chapters on how to present compositions professionally, in performance and online. The book is supported by an online software toolkit which enables readers to start creating their own compositions. Encouraging a 'hands on' approach to working with sound, Sonic Art is the perfect introduction for anyone interested in electroacoustic music and crafting art from sounds.

Loudspeakers: For Music Recording and Reproduction, Second Edition is a comprehensive guide, offering the tools and understanding needed to cut out the guesswork from loudspeaker choice and set-up. Philip Newell and Keith Holland, with the assistance of Sergio Castro and Julius Newell, combine their years of experience in the design, application, and use of loudspeakers to cover a range of topics from drivers, cabinets, and crossovers, to amplifiers, cables, and surround sound. Whether using loudspeakers in a recording studio, mastering facility, broadcasting studio, film post-production facility, home, or musician's studio, or if you simply aspire to improve your music-production system this book will help you make the right decisions. This new edition provides significant updates on the topics of digital control, calibration, and cinema loudspeaker systems.

Recent years have seen not just a revival, but a rebirth of the analogue record. More than merely a nostalgic craze, vinyl has become a cultural icon. As music consumption migrated to digital and online, this seemingly obsolete medium became the fastest-growing format in music sales. Whilst vinyl never ceased to be the favorite amongst many music lovers and DJs, from the late 1980s the recording industry regarded it as an outdated relic, consigned to dusty domestic corners and obscure record shops. So why is vinyl now experiencing a 'rebirth of its cool'?Dominik Bartmanski and Ian Woodward explore this question by combining a cultural sociological approach with insights from material culture studies. Presenting vinyl as a multifaceted cultural object, they investigate the reasons behind its persistence within our technologically accelerated culture. Informed by media analysis, urban ethnography and the authors' interviews with musicians, DJs, sound engineers, record store owners, collectors and cutting-edge label chiefs from a range of metropolitan centres renowned for thriving music scenes including London, New York, Tokyo, Melbourne, and especially Berlin, what emerges is a story of a modern icon.

Technology has become increasingly integrated into our daily lives, receiving a great deal of attention as an educational tool with the potential to enhance, or even transform, student learning. Music Learning Today: Digital Pedagogy for Creating, Performing, and Responding to Music presents an approach to conceptualizing and utilizing technology as a tool for music learning. Designed for use by pre- and in-service music teachers, it provides the essential understandings required for educators to become adaptive experts with music technology; to be instructional designers capable of creating and implementing lessons, units, and curriculum that take advantage of technological affordances to assist students in developing their musicianship. Most books about music and technology are technocentric, organized around specific technologies. Technological understanding is important and necessary for teachers, but research into educators' use of technology with students indicates that knowledge of the technology alone is insufficient. While some books have described teaching strategies and attempted to align the use of technologies with broader goals (standards), none of them have offered a coherent view of the interconnectedness of musical content, pedagogy, and technology. Grounded in the research and best practice literature, Music Learning Today makes connections among music knowledge and skill outcomes, the research on human cognition and music learning, best practices in music pedagogy, and technology. Its essential premise is that music educators and their students can benefit through use of technology as a tool to support learning in the three musical processes -creating, performing, and responding to music. The philosophical and theoretical rationales, along with the practical information discussed in the book, are applicable to all experience levels. However, the technological applications described are focused at a beginning to intermediate level, relevant to both pre-service and in-service music educators and their students.

With Computational Thinking in Sound, veteran educators Gena R. Greher and Jesse M. Heines provide the first book ever written for music fundamentals educators which is devoted specifically to music, sound, and technology. The authors demonstrate how the range of mental tools in computer science - for example, analytical thought, system design, and problem design and solution - can be fruitfully applied to music education, including examples of successful student work. While technology instruction in music education has traditionally focused on teaching how computers and software work to produce music, Greher and Heines offer context: a clear understanding of how music technology can be structured around a set of learning challenges and tasks of the type common in computer science classrooms. Using a learner-centered approach that emphasizes project-based experiences, the book provides music educators with multiple strategies to explore, create, and solve problems with music and technology in equal parts. It also provides examples of hands-on activities which encourage students, alone and in interdisciplinary groups, to explore the basic principles that underlie today's music technology and which expose them to current multimedia development tools.

Movies have never been the same since MTV. While the classic symphonic film score promised direct insight into a character's mind, the expanded role of popular music has made more ambiguous the question of when, if ever, we are allowed to see or share a character's emotions. As a result, the potential for irony and ambiguity has multiplied exponentially, and characterization and narrative capacities have fragmented. At the most basic level, this new aesthetic has required filmgoers to renegotiate some of their most basic instinctual connections with the human voice and with any sense of a filmmaking self. Music videos widened the creative vocabulary of filmmaking: they increased speeds of event in cinema and deflecting filmmakers from narrative, characterization, and storytelling toward a concentration on situation, feeling, mood, and time. Popular Music and the New Auteur charts the impact of music videos on seven visionary directors: Martin Scorsese, Sofia Coppola, David Lynch, Wong Kar-Wai, the Coen brothers, Quentin Tarantino, and Wes Anderson. Ashby and his contributors define these filmmakers' relation to the soundtrack as their key authorial gesture. These filmmakers demonstrate a fresh kind of cinematic musicality by writing against music rather than against script, and allowing pop songs a determining role in narrative and imagery. Featuring important new theoretical work by some of the most stimulating and provocative writers in the area today, Popular Music and the New Auteur will be required reading for all who study film music and sound. It will also be particularly relevant for readers in popular music studies, and its intervention in the ongoing debate on auteurism will make it necessary reading in film studies.

John Cage's disdain for records was legendary. He repeatedly spoke of the ways in which recorded music was antithetical to his work. In Records Ruin the Landscape, David Grubbs argues that, following Cage, new genres in experimental and avant-garde music in the 1960s were particularly ill suited to be represented in the form of a recording. These activities include indeterminate music, long-duration minimalism, text scores, happenings, live electronic music, free jazz, and free improvisation. How could these proudly evanescent performance practices have been adequately represented on an LP? In their day, few of these works circulated in recorded form. By contrast, contemporary listeners can encounter this music not only through a flood of LP and CD releases of archival recordings but also in even greater volume through Internet file sharing and online resources. Present-day listeners are coming to know that era's experimental music through the recorded artifacts of composers and musicians who largely disavowed recordings. In Records Ruin the Landscape, Grubbs surveys a musical landscape marked by altered listening practices.

Refining Sound is a practical roadmap to the complexities of creating sounds on modern synthesizers. As author, veteran synthesizer instructor Brian K. Shepard draws on his years of experience in synthesizer pedagogy in order to peel back the often-mysterious layers of sound synthesis one-by-one. The result is a book which allows readers to familiarize themselves with each individual step in the synthesis process, in turn empowering them in their own creative or experimental work. The book follows the stages of synthesis in chronological progression, starting readers at the raw materials of sound creation and ultimately bringing them to the final "polishing" stage. Each chapter focuses on a particular aspect of the synthesis process, culminating in a last chapter that brings everything together as the reader creates his/her own complex sounds. Throughout the text, the material is supported by copious examples and illustrations as well as by audio files and synthesis demonstrations on a related companion website. Each chapter contains easily digestible guided projects (entitled "Your Turn" sections) that focus on the topics of the corresponding chapter. In addition to this, one complete project will be carried through each chapter of the book cumulatively, allowing the reader to follow - and build - a sound from start to finish. The final chapter includes several sound creation projects in which readers are given types of sound to create as well as some suggestions and tips, with final outcomes is left to readers' own creativity. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of learning to create sounds on a synthesizer is to understand exactly what each synthesizer component does independent of the synthesizer's numerous other components. Not only does this book thoroughly illustrate and explain these individual components, but it also offers numerous practical demonstrations and exercises that allow the reader to experiment with and understand these elements without the distraction of the other controls and modifiers. Refining Sound is essential for all electronic musicians from amateur to professional levels of accomplishment, students, teachers, libraries, and anyone interested in creating sounds on a synthesizer.

Beyond Sound: The College and Career Guide in Music Technology is a must-read for anyone who loves music technology and wants to build a career in this competitive, fast-paced and exciting world. It is an outstanding resource for college and high school students, high school career centers, university placement centers, and libraries. Beyond Sound reflects on major technological advancements in recent history and explains why now is the ideal time to start a music technology career. An in-depth consideration of music technology education looks at over 200 schools that offer Music Technology, Music Recording, Music Industry, and Music Business programs. Beyond Sound considers the differences between BM, BS, BA, and BFA degrees as well as Graduate School, Trade School, and Art school programs. The reader is given the tools to research and make informed decisions about where to go to pursue their own formal music technology education. Beyond Sound provides practical guidance on career preparation, including how to get a great internship, how to land that first job, and how to make connections and move up in the business. Music technology jobs in recording, live sound, television and film, digital media, video games, retail sales, and education are described in great depth and clarity. Successful professionals in each of these fields share their stories, experiences, advice, and suggestions in candid interviews that provide the reader with a rare glimpse inside the professional world of music technology. Author Scott L. Phillips draws on his seventeen-year career as a technology trainer and educator, his scholarly research of music technology programs, and his extensive network of music technology professionals to bring the reader an intimate and accurate view of the exciting world of music technology. With this book, the aspiring music technologist will be able to learn about, prepare for, and begin a successful career that goes far Beyond Sound.

Professional studio design is a specialized science, with more than a touch of "black magic" thrown in. Over the past few years, Sound on Sound magazine has made one trip each month to a reader's studio. These visits have demonstrated that it is fairly simple to make a huge improvement to an untreated project-studio room, without spending a fortune. However, they've also proven that beginners' attempts at DIY acoustic treatments often cause more problems than they solve. Utilizing knowledge from dozens of visits to readers' home and project studios, the SOS team imparts easy-to-understand, organized troubleshooting advice. Learn how to rid yourself of monitoring problems and get an accurate monitoring system, how to enhance the sound of your recording space, and how to perfect your instrumental and vocal recordings. Decrease the time you spend re-recording and mixing, simply by improving your room with advice from the guys who have seen it all when it comes to make-do small studios. Contains: A structured look at the problems that most often plague small studios, with individual studio case studies addressing each issue Real solutions that you can both afford and implement; no thousand-dollar investments or idealized studio designs that don't work with your space! Case studies that look at small studios' specific problems, with additional break-outs tips that address quick fixes to common problems