April 13th, 2009
I stumbled across this book during my winter vacation – vacations almost always involve visiting local bookstores. I didn’t have a lot of time to scan the book before purchasing it and the price-tag almost lead me to putting it back on the shelf. I’m glad I didn’t, the book consolidates a lot of useful information that I’d only found scattered among various other sources before. By bringing this info into a single source, the book really helps to put all of that information in a logical context.
One of the things that I most liked about Recording Music on Location is that it doesn’t make too many assumptions about the audience: the books covers the most basic levels, describing two channel stereo recording using a handheld device, and leads to relatively complex topics including surround mixing and the mathematics of stereo soundstage reproduction. All of that is to say that some of the content was stuff I already knew, some helped me understand topics and processes I hadn’t before, and some just went over my head (at least this round.) I expect to take this book off my shelf periodically to revisit as my knowlege increases.
Most of the books I’d previously found had a clear bias toward recording popular music and multi-instrument setups. Some of that information was helpful, but as a solo classical musician, I’m really most interested in capturing an accurate stereo representation of a solo performance. The entire second half of the book focuses on recording techniques for solo and ensemble performances of classical music. I really appreciated this; it was nice not having to mentally translate from popular music performance setups with which I’m much less familiar.
The first half of the book on “Popular Music Recording” was actually quite helpful as well. Bartlett walks you through the process of recording a performance from selecting equipment, through the performance and recording process itself, to downloading and mastering the final audio on computer. Many other books and websites get into much more detail for individual parts of this process. The end-to-end process narrative, highlighting some of the decisions and processes along the way, seems uniquely helpful to me.
For the technically inclined, the appendices provide detailed overviews of stereo imaging theory and stereo microphone placement techniques along with ample reference articles for those who want to delve deeper. The weakest part of the book seemed to me to be the detailed listing of current production stereo and surround microphones: it’s illustrative in its breadth, but given the small amount of detail that can be devoted to each device, it amounts to little more that a catalog that might become quickly outdated.
One final part of the book that I’ve just begun to explore is the included CD which contains tracks demonstrating many of the topics discussed in the text. I think this is a fantastic inclusion and I’m eager to have the time to set aside for some careful listening and re-reading of pertinent chapters.
This is definitely a book I’d like to have had before my own trial-and-error live recording experiences. I highly recommend it for those just starting to get their feet wet in recording. If you’re a little further along the knowledge curve, please share your thoughts about the book in the comments & let me know what other books you found helpful in your own endeavors.