Making great audio recordings requires striking the right balance between technical know-how and practical understanding of recording sessions. Even in the digital age, some of the most important aspects of creating and recording music are non-technical and, as a result, are often overlooked by traditional recording manuals. The Art of Digital Audio Recording teaches readers what they really need to know in order to make great sound recordings with computers - both the practical and the technical information, including:

. What to look and listen for in a recording environment
. Straightforward advice on recording almost any instrument
. Essentials of digital audio workstations
. Essentials of recording gear: microphones, mixers, and speakers
. Fundamentals of understanding and applying EQ, compression, delay, and reverb
. Secrets to running creative recording sessions
. Practical application of digital editing, mixing, and mastering
A special section identifies solutions to the most common challenges in the recording studio, and the book also features an addendum with essential tips and reference information including:

. How to walk into a commercial studio and be the engineer
. Researching and buying gear: Internet vs. brick and mortar
. Digital formats: A handy reference
As a whole, The Art of Digital Audio Recording is an essential resource that gives recordists the tools they need to let technical understanding serve greater musical goals."

Nino Rota is one of the most important composers in the history of cinema. Both popular and prolific, he wrote some of the most cherished and memorable of all film music - for The Godfather Parts I and II, The Leopard, the Zeffirelli Shakespeares, nearly all of Fellini and for more than 140 popular Italian movies. Yet his music does not quite work in the way that we have come to assume music in film works: it does not seek to draw us in and identify, nor to overwhelm and excite us. In itself, in its pretty but reticent melodies, its at once comic and touching rhythms, and in its relation to what's on screen, Rota's music is close and affectionate towards characters and events but still restrained, not detached but ironically attached. In this major new study of Rota's film career, Richard Dyer gives a detailed account of Rota's aesthetic, suggesting it offers a new approach to how we understand both film music and feeling and film more broadly. He also provides a first full account in English of Rota's life and work, linking it to notions of plagiarism and pastiche, genre and convention, irony and narrative. Rota's practice is related to some of the major ways music is used in film, including the motif, musical reference, underscoring and the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic music, revealing how Rota both conforms to and undermines standard conceptions. In addition, Dyer considers the issue of gay cultural production, Rota's favourte genre, comedy, and his productive collaboration with the director Federico Fellini.