PC Music: The Easy Guide [Paperback]

This is a short book providing a hands-on beginners introduction to the music features/industry standards and potential within your PC. The author has a broad knowledge of the subject. As of this writing (2006), the 3rd edition is extremely up to date with coverage of technologies like: creating your own MP3s, Podcasting, and the latest software packages to simulate the vintage sounds of the previous decades (the author also notes the irony of this situation).

One thing the author repeatedly encourages is that you decide (specifically) what you are trying to accomplish; define your project. Through numerous example setups and applications, he demonstrates that the same pieces of technology can be combined for rather different purposes. It all comes down to what you are trying to do. Even if you don't know what you are tying to do, but just want to have some fun with music on your PC, the author addresses you too, as best he can.

The book begins with a brief description of how digital music technology (especially MIDI) works. This leads to a helpful discussion about the importance of selecting a soundcard. From there many different topics such as recording music digitally, sampling, notational software, MIDI instrument voices, and many others are covered at a very high level. There is not enough meat here to make you functional at any one aspect, but you can get the bird's eye view of everything; this was valuable to me.

There is a quite a bit here for guitar players. However, keyboard enthusiasts can also learn about state of the art synthesizer, software and hardware combinations. The author names specific products and models to get you started down a productive path. The products appendix in the back is several pages and very helpful. Most of the products are also described in the pages of the book with tons of black and white illustrations/screen shots.

I think the book could have benefited from more careful editing at several points (probably an effect of getting such an up to the minute technology book out to market quickly). I also would like to have seen more coverage of auto-accompaniment software like Band-In-A-Box and similar since those address a segment of the PC musician/beginner audience. Deeper coverage on the capabilities of Band-In-A-Box or Sibelius and other rich software packages would have helped me personally.

Overall, this is a helpful book for those who are wondering what all they might be able to do with their PC in music making. Very up to date, at least for now....

From how to connect a keyboard and record music onto a PC to plugging a guitar directly into a PC, this is no weighty tech pro's guide to PC music but a unique, satisfying musicians's tool requiring little computer knowledge to prove useful. Chapters survey all kinds of hardware and software options in a completely updated new edition which adds new sections on MP3 and the recording capabilities of a PC, making for an outstanding guide.

› Go to Amazon.com to see both reviews  4.5 out of 5 stars