A Musician's Guide to Pro Tools - Softcover

Keane, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0971849900 ISBN 13: 9780971849907

Publisher: Supercat Pr Ltd, 2002

Synopsis

A Musician’s Guide to Pro Tools, a new book by producer/engineer/musician John Keane, is designed to help beginners get off the ground quickly with Pro Tools. It provides tutorials containing very specific step-by-step instructions for recording, editing, and mixing a home demo. The book includes a CD-ROM with a Pro Tools session as part of the tutorial. It is a valuable resource, filled with tips and advice from a seasoned professional. Written in a clear, non-technical, and humorous style, it de-mystifies the recording process, saving the user countless hours of frustration from plowing through reference manuals.

About this title

From the Author:

"My main impetus for creating this book was the realization that my musician friends who had purchased the new semi-pro Pro Tools systems were being overwhelmed by the complexity of the software. Although the Pro Tools Reference Guide is very well written, they had difficulty taking it all in. In my efforts to help them through the learning curve, I found that the best approach was to show them only the parts of the program necessary to record, edit, and mix their own demos, using the techniques I had developed over the years.

The mission of these tutorials is to get beginners up and running in a few days, using their own instruments and their own music. My approach is to keep the lessons short and concise, with no unnecessary information. The instructions are very specific, and assume that the reader knows nothing about Pro Tools. The tools needed for the specific tasks are introduced gradually, and the emphasis is on having fun with the program. For those who wish to learn them, the more advanced features will be covered in Book Two.

It is my hope that musicians who may feel daunted by the Pro Tools learning curve will find this book an enjoyable shortcut to the amazing world of hard disk recording."

From the Inside Flap:

Foreword by Peter Buck of R.E.M.

I’ve known John Keane for almost twenty years. When my band first worked with John, he had just made the huge technological leap from four-track to eight-track — analog, of course.

Over the next eighteen or nineteen years and seven or eight albums, I’ve watched John expand his studio from eight-track to sixteen-track to twenty-four track, and finally to forty-eight track digital. Every step of the way, John mastered the new equipment and squeezed the most sonically out of each format. Then along came Pro Tools.

I was doing a session with some band now lost in the mists of time when John unpacked the thing. My first question was, "Why would anyone want a television in the control room?" This prompted a twenty-minute explanation from John on the technology and uses of Pro Tools. Of course it was all over my head; I’d gotten lost somewhere between the switch from eight tracks to sixteen. I do remember, though, that John used the phrase "This is the wave of the future."

Over the course of the next year, I saw John work his way through the manual, and day by day, miracles occurred. As John became more and more familiar with Pro Tools, recording became easier and easier. Great takes that had one huge glitch were fixed; editing became instantaneous.

Over the years I’ve since worked with many Pro Tools operators, and I’ve got to say, John can make that thing do things that no one else can. I’d recommend this book to anybody, whether beginner or expert. As for myself, I’m almost ready to make the jump to sixteen tracks.

See ya, Peter

About this edition

• Publisher: Supercat Pr Ltd
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0971849900
• ISBN 13: 9780971849907
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128