Guerrilla Home Recording, Second Edition

Great book and great price. Thank you!

I really liked this book. I started my first home studio with a 4-track Tascam cassette deck / 8-channel mixer with some outboard effects, a Roland JP-6, a TR-808 drum machine and acoustic instruments. Now I'm 99% digital. If you are using a DAW make sure to get this version of the book and not the prior version. This edition has much more info on digital recording.The main point of the book is the mindset of Guerrilla home recording. I'm a software architect by trade and we apply (or hopefully apply) the 80-20 rule or Pareto principle to our designs. This is similar to the mindset put forth in this book. Get the job done using what you have at hand. The method is secondary; the results are primary. A point well--taken too is the idea of forcing yourself past analysis paralysis and just writing music. The author puts forth a challenge to devote a full day to writing and recording as many songs as you can. Sounds like a good idea.There are a host of techniques that someone new to recording can quickly lay hold of. The author doesn't fall into the trap of spewing out all kinds of theory and math. He doesn't try to impress you with his vast knowledge. He gives practical advice that you can put to use immediately. He's been doing this for a long time and has worked with some of the best in the industry and it shows.I am glad to give it 5 stars, but I have one and really only one thing I would have liked to have been done differently. The author has a wealth of experience and equipment from the analog age. I don't think most people who are going to create a home recording studio today are going to spend their hard earned cash on outboard effects or even in many cases, sound modules. My recording hardware has pretty much gone the way of my paper library - it is almost all digital. I just don't get the feeling the author has fully embraced the digital age just yet.That said, there is plenty between the digital covers (of course I have the Kindle edition!) for the fully computer-based studio owner, including many examples of how to use your DAW to get great results. Even the chapters that refer to analog equipment have their, well analog, in the digital world. Well worth the read.

Even though the book was written around 2008 and I'm reading it in 2020, I have found this book to be the most helpful book on home recording so far. A lot of terminology thrown around today stems from older technology such as mixers and analog tape. Because this book was written at the dawn of home digital recording age, it is perfect for bridging the gap between the older terminology and new technology. I use Garageband as my DAW and I found many of the lessons applicable to Garageband in 2020. For example, his discussion on the discriminate use of effects is every bit as applicable today as it was in 2008. His lessons on mixing and mastering are also just as applicable on new technology as it was on old technology.It's too bad the author stopped updating the book. I found the format to be one of the most helpful out there for solo singer and songwriters like myself.

If I would have bought this book first, I wouldn't have wasted my money on others. What I like about this author is he gets to what matters; making good recordings with the gear you have. Many "Home Recording" books are a tough read. Some are just plain dry like a tech manual. They get too much into excruciating technical details and minutia causing the reader to lose interest or fall asleep reading them. Some of them are little more than sales brochures showing pictures and describing gear you could never afford and trying to convince you that you can't make a good recording without this piece of software or that digital recorder or whatever.One book I've read was quite verbose, with an author who must have thought that adding "clever" jokes and useless banter would help the reader better understand the recording process. ...notThis book gets to the meat and has just enough "friendly silliness" in it to keep the reader interested, while getting the message out front in a clear and understandable way. This is the third copy of "Guerrilla Home Recording" that I have purchased, gifting them to younger musicians who need something they can actually grasp and relate to.Explained inside is the concept of "making due with what you have," rather than constantly scouring the catalogs and websites looking for that magic piece of gear that will make all your recordings sound professional. The absolute basics are expained in a way that is both easy to understand and easy to remember.Many of the techniques described within can also be applied to live sound reinforcement situations with excellent results.A highly recommended first read for novice to intermediate level sound engineering afficionados..

I had to give this 5-stars because this is by far the most useful book on the subject i have read - and one that i have read from start to finish without getting bored by techno-jargon that seems to have been written by aliens in other books.For years i've written, produced my own music and at the start when i first began using a DAW my knowledge of the subject of recording and mixing was zero. I wondered why my recordings sounded, well, bad! I was led to believe that only expensive studios could produce polished audio recordings until i began learning through my own experience how EQs and compressors work and learning my DAW inside out. However, this book has got me back into doing it and explains so much for beginners who just want to record their own stuff in a home studio without all the mathematical jargon that can confuse people. The book is written in plain English with dedicated chapters about frequencies, compressors, effects, recording on tape, digital, MIDI and a section on Analog for purists! All in all a very good read and one that i know i can go to for reference time and again ;)

I've been home recording for many years, and I consider myself reasonably experienced, but I learned a lot by reading this. It was particularly helpful regarding the use of compressors/expanders which I have always found to be something of a black art. Two things that I didn't like. First, the majority of the book seems aimed at using a software recorder to record with but I could find no mention of the type that the author was using. From the screenshots I'm pretty sure it's not the one I use which rendered the screenshots somewhat less than useful. Second, for people using hardware recorders (portastudio type) I feel that it is unlikely that they will get the same amount of use from this book. While PC based recording offers many (often free) VST plugins for achieving compression/expansion/reverb/delay etc, people with hardware machines are likely to find themselves faced with quite an outlay for hardware versions of these FX/processors to achieve the same result.The previous version of this book dealt more with hardware machines and I think it may have been better to expand the book to take account of the growing use of software recorders while maintaining the previous excellent advice for hardware.I would still recommend this book to anyone who is struggling to come to terms with home recording on whatever platform. There is a wealth of knowledge here that could take a lifetime to accumulate through trial and error.

An excellent book on home recording that is as useful for "newbies" as it is for those who may be a little further down the learning road. Written in a casual, chatty style that does not intimidate, the writer assumes little prior knowledge of the subject. It covers both hardware mixing desks and DAWs and even has a section on Analogue Recording using tape (wish I hadn't sold my old Akai reel-to-reel :)).I found the sections on frequency slotting and stereo panning very useful as it can sometimes be difficult to make a recording less "muddy" when the recorded items share many frequency ranges. I wish I'd read this book before tackling "Mixing Audio" by Roey Izhaki (another excellent book) as this is a gentler introduction to the subject but Izhaki's book is a much more in-depth tome. If, like me, you're working with a limited budget for equipment, using this book and music magazine articles will get you a long way towards your goal - and it's an excellent price from Amazon.

I have always found sound recording to be more of a cliff face than a learning curve. But this book has really got me moving. It starts at the very beginning - but manages never to be simplistic - and it simply progresses from there in logical steps. What I find very helpful is that it addresses those with low budgets and very basic set-ups (like me) as well as more technical and computer-based systems. The subject becomes more complex as he progresses of course but everything is carefully explained and he makes every effort to avoid blinding the reader with over-technical language. As far as I can see this book seems to cover just about everything that you need to know to get you up and running. It is a curious title but it is what it says - a book on home recording techniques that gets you up and running.

Brilliant reading for anyone that's interested in improving their recording knowledge and skills: particularly for understanding what happens to your signal as it moves through the chain - as well as how to tweak, change and make the most of it at every interval.Packed full of useful and practical advice (from the writer's experience) it manages to walk the line between technical mumbo jumbo and keeping it understandable. Everything's explained well enough so that beginners can pick it up, but goes into everything in greater detail as the chapters progress. You can do a lot of damage with this book and some basic home recording tools.