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Product Description
Book Description
A clever resource for the ever-growing home recording market. The revised edition is updated with a greater focus on digital recording techniques, the most powerful tools available to the home recordist. There are chapters devoted to instrument recording, humanizing drum patterns, mixing with plug-ins and virtual consoles, and a new section on using digital audio skills. And since, many true "Guerrillas" still record to analog tape, we have retained the best of that world. This edition features many more graphics than in the original edition, further enforcing Guerrilla Home Recording's reputation as the most readable, user-frienly recording title on the market.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fantastic comprehensive resource for the home recording studio.,
By
This review is from: Guerrilla Home Recording: Music Pro Guides (Paperback)
I bought this book because I was looking to make my basement recordings better. Friends were saying they couldn't "hear" vocals. I bought this book to learn how to mix. After reading this book, I realized I not only needed to learn how to mix properly - I needed to learn how to record properly. This book traces through the fundamentals in a VERY reader-friendly way, and provides excellent how-to guidance for home recordings. It won't bog you down with high tech lingo, but the upper level ideas are there.The book has a bias for hardware (compression/expansion, reverb, and EQ) in favour of plug-ins. I've been told by people in professional audio that software compression works just as well in good DAWs, and there are as many VST reverb plug-ins out there as there are outboard processors/pedals. The book also veers towards MIDI drums dedicating a chapter to it, but even if MIDI drums is not your thing, it goes into good detail of how to record live drums well. The best advice the author gives is to "get over yourself". After reading some audio forums, I can see there are a lot of very polarized views. The author presents a fresh, ingenuitive, and practical angle to recording with what you've got rather than spending thousands of dollars for state-of the art equipment.
5.0 out of 5 stars
At last a book on home recording written by a musician for musicians,
By djeff (Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Guerrilla Home Recording: Music Pro Guides (Paperback)
This book is excellent! I have been interested in the subject of home recording for more than 30 years. Some may say I am a slow learner and they may be right, but given that this is for me a hobby and that the technology allowing one to produce great results at home is not that old, my interest has encouraged me over the years to read many books and articles on the subject. One thing that seemed to come out consistently in these texts is that musicians should concentrate on creating the music and leave the recording aspect to the engineers. I always found this statement rather annoying and although it is certainly true that specialists are better prepared to do this job, I always felt that the authors were also trying to protect their turf and justify their existence, somehow.The music creation process also involves arrangement and arrangement, to me, includes instrument separation, application of effects, control of dynamics, etc. For example, can you imagine U2's The Edge recording a dry guitar track and leave to the engineer the task of adding the delay? The delay he uses is part of his sound, it is not an afterthought. This is because music creation is essentially trying to reproduce what you hear in your head which is mostly a "finished product". I always felt uncomfortable handing over my tracks to someone that has no clue about what I am hearing, what I want to create and I have often been disappointed with the end result. This is why I was really happy to come across this book. For once, someone was approaching the music as a whole and contrarily to some other review I have read on this book, I personally think that the title is quite appropriate. It talks, among other things, about the practical aspect of compression, separation, effects as part of the music creation process. It does not focus on the equipment but rather on how you can use this equipment, whatever it is, to get the results you want, musically. The author uses a down to earth, no nonsense approach and explains why you do certain things and demystifies some of the concepts. For example, I always thought that it was best to record "dry" and add effects later; the author explains why, but goes on saying that effects are like "spices" rather than the "icing on a cake" and as such can be pre-planned and sometimes printed during tracking. I really liked the chapter on instrument separation in space, time and frequency (frequency slotting); I knew all these concepts but the way the author presents it just puts it all together in an easy to understand practical package. I would conclude by saying that of all the books on home recording I have read, this is the best. It has been written by a musician for musicians. Thank you, Karl Coryat!
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.4 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews) 22 of 25 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good, but ...,
By famous beagle - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Guerrilla Home Recording: Music Pro Guides (Paperback)
This book is good for the beginner recordist, and it does a good job of explaining the basic techniques. The problem is that it kind of has its feet in two different worlds.It makes it clear from the beginning that it's going to treat your recorder device---whatever that may be---as a generic black box. It doesn't matter if you're recording on 4-track cassette, 8-track R2R, or a full-blown pro-tools rig he says. Another point he makes from the beginning is the "mix as you go" concept, saying that we guerilla recordists don't have the facilities to wait until the final mix. He also talks about using an expander to cut down the noise on your tracks. Cool! So far, so good. It looks as though we're gonna get some good advice on how to use our "weird" gear. However, about 1/3 to 1/2 into the book, he basically urges you to ditch analog and go digital, which is what he's done (and he'll never record any other way he says). At this point, though, you have to wonder what all his previous advice is about. What I mean is, if you're running a full-fledged DAW system, you don't NEED to mix as you go anymore. You can setup endless, non-destructive sub-mixes if you want to conserve CPU power, but you can probably get along mixing the whole thing at the end. You'll also have endless plug-in resources for effects, so there's no need to print effects anymore (another technique he talked about in the beginning). You also wouldn't need an expander, because you'll have automated mixing resources, so you could set up your own automation to handle the noise in between phrases. The book does give some good ideas, and for that I give it 3 stars, but it just doesn't seem to know what to do with itself. It seems as though it would have been a really good book if it were written in 1990 or, before the digital revolution had completely taken over, and any kid with a laptop can record 48 tracks if he wants to now. In other words, if you do as he suggests and "go digital," there's really no reason to buy his book, because you won't NEED to take the shortcuts and workarounds that he teaches. 11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good but general,
By Matthew Taylor - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Guerrilla Home Recording: Music Pro Guides (Paperback)
The author gives a great deal of useful information, mainly general in nature. The only thing I didn't like about the book is the way he badmouths other people who are doing home recording -- it's important, in my opinion, to remember that each of us has a different set of ears. Slagging other people's work says more about your own insecurities than their abilities. The main thing he badmouths is generally accepted studio techniques; I see the value of trying things outside the norm when using cheap equipment, but the author makes some bad recommendations based on that. For example, he gives studio monitors short shrift, and believes that headphones can be used to mix. They can, but once you've heard even a cheap set of monitors, and experience how they improve your mixes, you will never mix on headphones if you have any choice at all.I would have enjoyed more specifics; there are some, such as good, clear discussions of EQ and compressor use -- actually, the compression advice has done more to improve my recordings than anything else. I had been afraid of over-compressing; when I lost that fear, I found I was able to use WAY more than I thought I could without killing the dynamics or making the song sound squashed. Another area where the author gets specific is in drum programming, but he attempts to discourage readers from attempting to record real drums in the same breath. I recommend this book highly, as long as readers understand that it is only the advice of one person, and that like any advice, some is helpful and some is not. For the price, this book has a lot more helpful than unhelpful information. 10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
I'd give six stars if I could,
By flanfan - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Guerrilla Home Recording: Music Pro Guides (Paperback)
The following passage, headed "Don't Sweat Acoustics" (p. 12), is typical of the author's approach:"Most recording books include entire chapters on how to improve your studio's acoustics. But in the Guerrilla studio, the room is irrelevant -- you should be able to move your gear into the garage or a VW bus and still get just about the same sound. . . . As a musician you probably don't have the time, money, or interest to bother with building homemade diffusers and bass traps. That's okay -- it'll be our secret." If you're an audiophile or a studio expert (or both), this book likely isn't for you. For me, it's as close to perfect as I'm likely to find. I want to learn to make clean, solid recordings in the space available to me, with what gear I can afford. This book explains how, simply and clearly. It's a great resource. My compliments and gratitude to Mr. Coryat. |
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