Understanding Records, Second Edition: A Field Guide to Recording Practice

✍ Scribed by Jay Hodgson

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 243
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The revised edition of Understanding Records explains the musical language of recording practice in a way any interested reader and student can easily understand. Drawing on readily available hit records produced since 1945, each section of this book explains a handful of core production and engineering techniques in chronological record-making sequence, elucidates how those techniques work, what they sound like, how they function musically, where listeners can hear them at work in the broader Top 40 soundscape, and where they fit within the broader record-making process at large. As the only book to introduce music production and its practical elements with no assumed prior knowledge, the revised edition includes:
• Exclusive print and video interviews with emerging and established recordists, including: Alex Chuck Krotz (Drake, Three Days Grace, Mother Mother); Kevin O’ Leary (Shawn Mendes, The Glorious Sons, Monster Truck); Alastair Sims (Rush, The Tragically Hip, Barenaked Ladies); Matt Shelvock (kingmobb, san holo, bitbird, DROLOE); and Russ Hepworth-Sawyer (Billy Ray Cyrus, Steve Earle, Amadou & Miriam)
• Numerous “real word” audio examples, organized into easily accessible streaming playlists, culled from Juno-nominated sessions the author himself worked on, and numerous other professional sources.
• Easy to understand explanations of each facet of the record production process, which avoid technical jargon and clarify terminology.
• Information on new developments in recording practice and updated musical references. Completely reworked and expanded sections on mixing and audio mastering

✦ Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Academic context
A quick note on organization
A final note on how to use this field guide
Chapter 1: Tracking (Making Audio Signals)
Transduction
Direct-injection
Sequencing
Chapter 2: Mixing (The Space of Communications)
Mixing and the multitrack paradigm
Signal processing
Chapter 3: Mastering (The Final Say)
Mastering: A brief history
Finalization: Mixing/mastering
Mastering as arm’s-length peer review
The art of mastering: Making a start
The art of mastering: EQ
The art of mastering: Dynamics
The art of mastering: Other tools, other approaches
Mid-side processing: Determining width and depth
Mid-side processing: Corrective and creative
De-noising: Single-ended and otherwise
A quick note on the peculiar art of remastering
The transfer process: Balancing for output(s)
Conclusion: Mastering as a value added for other services
Coda (Fade-Out)
Notes
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Coda
Index