What s in This Book | Real World Digital Audio

What's in This Book

This book is a comprehensive reference for creating music with digital audio technology, centering on the computer. It's a practical guide to the diverse skills you'll need to produce a wide variety of music and sound. You can use it as you would a reference book, particularly if you're a more advanced user , but it's also designed so that if you read it in order you'll develop a solid foundation that you'll be able to build on more easily.

The first four chapters cover the underlying fundamentals of sound plus choosing and configuring gear:

Chapter 1 explains how sound works, how we hear, and how sound is translated into digital form. Understanding these fundamentals will help demystify many of the terms and concepts used in audio tools, and will help you get the results you want.
Chapter 2 surveys the landscape of available hardware and software gear, explains what each tool does, and shows how to choose the studio setup that's right for you.
Chapter 3 focuses on how to configure and optimize your computer and equipment for the best audio performance.
Chapter 4 explains how to connect your hardware, from the many potentially confusing cable types and labels to various patching setups.

The next five chapters cover various production techniques. Depending on your interest, you may want to read some or all of them:

Chapter 5 is an overview of how software tools can produce a finished song, focusing on two entry-level tutorials, one for the Mac and one for Windows. It explains the use of loops in song production, particularly for backing tracks and live groove-based performances .
Chapter 6 explains various microphone types and how they're used to capture sound, including where they're positioned when recording many of the commonly used musical instruments.
Chapter 7 explores the different kinds of audio processing and effects. You'll learn what effects are and how to best use them in production.
Chapter 8 is an introduction to MIDI and explains how it can be used to capture performances and control software.
Chapter 9 covers how to create and edit original sounds on digital instruments, making your computer or hardware synthesizer into an expressive musical instrument.

The final four chapters bring together the earlier topics, showing you how to produce a finished result, whether it's a recorded track for CD or other distribution, a notated score, a video, or a concert performance:

Chapter 10 looks at how the raw materials of an audio project can be shaped into a finished recorded track, how to store that track in different file formats, and how to distribute your finished content on CDs, DVDs, and online.
Chapter 11 covers how to create, edit, and share a notated score.
Chapter 12 explains how to work with video and motion, including how to match sound to image and how to manage and edit time information and digital video formats.
Chapter 13 explores the techniques needed to make a computer a performance instrument, whether it's for simple backing tracks or for more elaborate interactive setups that include synchronized visuals.