General Books - Page 5

Cakewalk Synthesizers: From Presets to Power User

Simon Cann

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Cakewalk's software synthesizers are some of the most powerful and most widely used in the market. Until now, there hasn't been one comprehensive resource to help users harness the power of all of these amazing tools. Cakewalk Synthesizers: From Presets to Power User will show you how to operate and get the best results from Cakewalk's complete range of synths, from those that are bundled with Cakewalk's main products (including SONAR, Project5, and Kinetic), to the rgc:audio synthesizers (such as Z3TA+), to Cakewalk's newest synthesizers, including Dimension Pro and Rapture. The book begins by diving into the general theories about synthesis and creating sounds with the featured synthesizers. From there, the chapters focus on each distinct synthesizer, its range of uses, the tools that are available with it, and how to set it up for day-to-day use. In addition to looking at all of the different synthesizers and how to use them in your productions, the book also discusses filters, envelopes, effects, the sfz format, how to make sounds and create patches, and much, much more. Also included with the book is an interview with the creator of many of the synthesizers, as well as sound design master classes from several leading synthesizer programmers. Chances are, you won't have every synthesizer covered in this book. That's okay, because this book has something for everyone, whether you own all the synths covered or you only use the ones that come with your host program. It's also useful if you just want to learn about synthesis. Simply put, this is the ultimate guide to learning about synthesizer programming and to understanding and using all of Cakewalk's synthesizers!

Mastering Music at Home

Mitch Gallagher

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

It wasn’t all that many years ago that almost every serious audio recording session took place in a commercial studio and was performed by professional engineers and producers using highly specialized, extremely expensive equipment. But those days are long gone. Today, artists of all levels–from amateur to mega-star–are working in their home and project studios, sometimes with an engineer and/or a producer to help them and sometimes without, doing the producing and recording themselves. Using a personal computer and today’s affordable software and hardware tools, it’s possible to capture professional level tracks and create perfectly balanced mixes right from the comfort of your own home without spending a fortune. But, there’s one part of the process of creating music at home that has eluded many home recordists. The final stage that puts the polished sheen on the mix. The step that allows homemade productions to better compete with those coming out of multimillion-dollar commercial recording facilities. The final preparation that will ready the music for release on CD or over the Internet. This step is called mastering. Mastering Music at Home is for any home or project studio owner or operator. It's for musicians and engineers who can't afford to pay a professional mastering engineer thousands of dollars to master their music, but who still want to get professional-level results when releasing their songs to the web or on CD. After an overview of mastering and the gear required, the book goes on to cover acoustic considerations, problem solving, distribution, and much, much more. Throughout the book, audio professionals provide additional “in the trenches” case studies on how they approach the art of mastering. The book's companion CD-ROM includes numerous real-world music examples to help you work through the book's tutorials. This is the only guide you’ll ever need to take your home recordings to the next level.

Apple Pro Training Series: Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Studio 2

Mark Spencer, Jem Schofield

Amazon Price: $34.64 List Price: $54.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Peachpit Press Amazon Marketplace: 39 new & used starting at $29.25

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A Fast Way To Get Up And Running 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

After using Adobe's Premiere and After Effects for a number of years, I finally decided to switch to Final Cut Studio 2.

Whilst editing methods in Final Cut Studio were pretty much the same, I wanted to unlock the hidden gems that I knew FCS2 had under the hood.

I've been a fan of Peachpit Press' releases so I didn't hesitate to stock up on the Final Cut Studio 2 series. Of all the titles in this category, "Apple Pro Training Series: Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Studio 2" was the first to arrive in the mail.

Each lesson is fun and takes you through the new features and quickly gets you familiar with the power of the software.

This is a perfect book for anyone new to Apple's mammoth A/V suite and also for those that wish to become certified without attending classes. Using this book series, you can take the Apple Certified Pro Level 1 exams (for Level 2, you will need to attend actual classroom courses).

To get the most from this book, set aside the time needed for each lesson, don't rush them as you could miss a vital step or even a useful side note (I learned from this mistake) and keep it to one lesson per day to maximize retention.

Highly recommended for those getting started out in Final Cut Studio 2 and want to get working on projects quickly.

Editorial Review:

This practical book focuses on just the parts of Final Cut Studio that editors and designers need to create motion graphics in their daily work. Using footage from the BBC archives along with Motion, Final Cut Pro, and Live Type (all included in Final Cut Studio), you’ll build broadcast-quality titles, motion menus, show bumpers, and news opens. As with the other titles in the Apple Pro Training Series, each chapter in this Apple-authorized guide represents a complete lesson--with projects to complete and a review section to reinforce the lessons. Author and video editor/producers Mark Spencer and Jem Schofield begin by introducing the basics of creating an animated title sequence with Final Cut Pro. From there, you’ll learn everything from text animation, compositing, and keyframing to 3D set creation and camera animation. Step-by-step exercises and a DVD with project and media files will have you creating stunning motion graphics in no time.

Apple TV Pocket Guide, The (2nd Edition)

Jeff Carlson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good source of information 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This book is about the size of a paperback novel (160 pages). The inside pages are in black and white and contain many photos and screenshots to illustrate points. If you have thought about purchasing an Apple TV, then this book would certainly be a handy thing to have on hand. It takes you from explaining what the Apple TV is and what it isn't, to getting it set up and connected and then how to use it.
There is a good Index if you need to hunt for a particular word or phrase.

I do not have an Apple TV and don't plan on buying one anytime soon, but I am interested in what it can do. Who knows? Maybe I will find a reason that I absolutely need one.

Things you can do with an Apple TV include streaming content from your iTunes Library to watch on the television. You can even stream content from a friend's computer to your TV. Obviously, you can show photo slideshows from your computer to the television, and play your own home movies including high-definition content, assuming you have an HDTV also. Actually, you have to have a widescreen HDTV or "enhanced definition" to use Apple TV--that is something I didn't know to begin with.

I didn't see any mention of viewing youtube.com videos through the Apple TV but Apple has said you can do that. This book was published in 2007 but probably just before that news was out.

I am hoping that in the future the Apple TV will let you do a lot more. Currently, I have watched many TV shows online that I missed watching when they were broadcast. It would be great to be able to watch any of those with the Apple TV through my television set while kicked back on the sofa. I could do that if those shows are in the iTunes Store, but then I would have to pay $1.99 for each episode I watch. Of course, I would get to keep them forever, but when it comes to watching TV shows, I usually am satisfied to watch it once.

Editorial Review:

Here is your essential companion to the Apple TV set-top box. The Apple TV Pocket Guide steers you through how to

• Connect your Apple TV to your television and home network.
• Rent and buy movies--including HD movies--using Apple TV.
• Stream content from a friend's computer to your TV.
• View high-definition content on your HDTV using the Apple TV.
• Watch movies and TV shows, view photos, and listen to songs and podcasts.
• Create high-quality movies from DVDs you own to play on the Apple TV.
• Convert your own home movies for showing on the big screen.
• Watch YouTube videos.
• View photos from iPhoto, Flickr, and .Mac Web Galleries.
• Fix common problems and learn what to do if you can't fix them yourself.
  

iMovie 08 and iDVD 08 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide

Jeff Carlson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Visual QuickStart Guide—the quick and easy way to learn!

This full-color, amply illustrated, accessible book teaches readers the essential skills necessary for creating compelling movies with iMovie and iDVD, Apple's consumer-friendly digital movie and DVD-burning software applications. Readers can follow the step-by-step instructions from the beginning to get a tour of the applications or look up specific tasks to learn just what they need to know. Longtime Macintosh and technology writer Jeff Carlson takes extra steps to ensure that readers understand all of the key aspects of digital movie making.

• Easy visual approach uses pictures to guide you through iMovie and iDVD (and how they interact with the other iLife ’08 applications) and show you what to do.
• Concise steps and explanations let you get up and running in no time.
• Page for page, the best content and value around.
• Companion Web site at www.jeffcarlson.com/imovievqs offers links mentioned in the book, sample movies, and ongoing news and information about iMovie, iDVD, and video editing.
  

Audio Mashup Construction Kit: ExtremeTech

Jordan "DJ Earworm" Roseman

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

HERE ARE SOME SOUND IDEAS.

Wonder what would happen if the Big Band sound crashed into heavy metal? Or what the offspring of a balladeer and a rapper might sound like? How about smooth jazz and acid rock? Stop wondering-this book will take you there. You'll explore hardware and software choices first and select what you need; then you'll sample a little music theory. After that, it's step by step to the big mashup. Do what sounds good.

How to mix & mash.

Cool stuff you'll learn:

• How to use mashup construction software
• Basics of songwriting and music theory
• Insider tips on selecting your songs
• How to get your tracks in key and in sync
• Ways to extract vocals from full songs
• Tricks for arranging your mashup for maximum impact
• How to polish up your mashup with mastering and effects
• Rendering, distribution, and legal considerations

Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0 Tutorial and MultiMedia CD

Roger Toogood

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good beginner tutorial. 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This tutorial is great for beginners who are using Pro/E Wildfire 3.0 for the first time. It doesn't cover some of the really advanced features, but Pro/E is just to deep of a program for that to be possible. Overall, it's an excellent book to teach the ins and outs of Pro/E, and it gets you very comfortable with designing almost anything imaginable. My one complaint is that, at times, the tutorial seems to get a bit wordy.

Editorial Review:

The ten lessons in this tutorial introduce students to Pro/ENGINEER's design capabilities.

Table of Contents

1. User Interface, View Controls and Model Structure
2. Creating a Simple Object (Part I)
3. Creating a Simple Object (Part II)
4. Revolved Protrusions, Mirror Copies, Rounds, and Chamfers
5. Modeling Utilities and the 3 R’s
6. Datum Planes and Sketcher Tools
7. Patterns and Copies
8. Engineering Drawings
9. Assembly Fundamentals
10. Assembly Operations
11. Sweeps and Blends
Appendix : Interface Customization
Index

Musimathics, Volume 1: The Mathematical Foundations of Music

Gareth Loy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Mathematics can be as effortless as humming a tune, if you know the tune," writes Gareth Loy. In Musimathics, Loy teaches us the tune, providing a friendly and spirited tour of the mathematics of music—a commonsense, self-contained introduction for the nonspecialist reader. It is designed for musicians who find their art increasingly mediated by technology, and for anyone who is interested in the intersection of art and science.

In this volume, Loy presents the materials of music (notes, intervals, and scales); the physical properties of music (frequency, amplitude, duration, and timbre); the perception of music and sound (how we hear); and music composition. Musimathics is carefully structured so that new topics depend strictly on topics already presented, carrying the reader progressively from basic subjects to more advanced ones. Cross-references point to related topics and an extensive glossary defines commonly used terms. The book explains the mathematics and physics of music for the reader whose mathematics may not have gone beyond the early undergraduate level. Calling himself "a composer seduced into mathematics," Loy provides answers to foundational questions about the mathematics of music accessibly yet rigorously. The topics are all subjects that contemporary composers, musicians, and musical engineers have found to be important. The examples given are all practical problems in music and audio. The level of scholarship and the pedagogical approach also make Musimathics ideal for classroom use. Additional material can be found at a companion web site.

Composing Digital Music For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

Russell Dean Vines

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Yes, you can turn those great melodies and smokin’ grooves in your head into stunning digital music! And you don’t have to be a musical genius or a computer geek to do it! Composing Digital Music For Dummies shows you everything you need to know to compose great tunes using the hottest digital tools.

This friendly, plain-English guide explains all of the digital music basics, including how to work with the latest hardware and software, use templates from the companion CD-ROM to make a quick start, build your first tune, and save it in different formats. You’ll also find out how to add instruments to your score, set tempos and keys, create chord symbols and show fretboards, add lyrics to your tune, and much more. Discover how to:

• Write and arrange digital music
• Determine what — if any — equipment you need
• Create your own ringtones and mp3s
• Compose with a MIDI controller, or a mouse
• Work with notation software
• Use keyboard shortcuts
• Publish your creations on the Internet
• Build your own tune from scratch
• Extract parts from your score for each instrument

The companion CD-Rom also includes a demo of Sebelius 5, the most popular music notation software, as well as audio files for all music examples in the book. With this step-by-step guide and your computer, you’ll have everything you need to start writing, arranging, and publishing your own digital music — immediately!

Skype For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

Loren Abdulezer, Susan Abdulezer, Howard Dammond

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A note from Susan (one of the authors!) 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.

Okay, I had to give it 5 stars since I co-wrote the book and I know all the research, reflection, editing and late nights that went into Skype for Dummies. But I also wanted to add a little personal note about Skype and why I wanted to write this book.

Skype is an amazing way to communicate. I don't use it exclusively (I use land lines, email and cell phones too). But I wanted to open up the possibilities of using a program that let's you talk, type in messages, conference, videoconference, transfer files all at the same time, in the same venue, exploding the idea of what it means to mingle electronically. My husband Loren (my co-author), and our friend Howard Dammond (my other co-author), used Skype constantly in the writing work flow. We'd develop an outline and send the file out (you can send files out to a whole bunch of people at once if they are in a Skype chat or conference with you). We'd each look at it, comment, paste in paragraphs, changes, suggestions and add live links in the chat window, and then get down to work. Our work flow was almost exclusively on Skype. This was true even when Loren was in the study and I was in the living room in the same apartment. It was faster to Skype a file and paste a paragraph into a chat than it was to email or print and walk the chapter over to the next room. We really hadn't anticipated how efficient this was (and grateful for that efficiency when deadlines loomed).

Skype had become part of our culture of communicating. We used it for work, play, to explore, to teach and to connect our far flung families.

On any given day, while I'm at work writing or researching on my computer, a little alert comes up inviting me to answer a Skype call. Not unusual...but the call is from my mother, a new user to computers, and well into her eighties. Mom lives in Florida, I'm in New York, and her Skype contacts allow her to instantly call any of her children with a couple of clicks. She also uses landlines and cell phones, but the quality of a Skype call for her is much clearer...a boon to failing hearing. I coached my Mom in how to set up a contact list and how to Skype out to her brothers in Indiana and Virginia, and her nieces in California. She is a confident Skyper (although she calls it Spyke!) and absolutely took to the program because it made sense to use it.

In the book we certainly tried to be really, really clear about how to use all the features of Skype...and then some (editors in the Dummies series are meticulous about insisting on clarity...albeit with a huge dose of humour). But we wanted to talk about the new culture that is emerging because of such programs; the enormity of how much more productive we can be if we take advantage of new tools; how far our reach can go in multi-continent collaboration, language learning, and business development.

To me, Skype is personal. I use it every day. This book was not a platform for political, economic or ethical discussions on Skype, eBay, cable companies and the like (I'll let you know when I become a political columnist). It's simply a glance down the road, a fun travel guide to suggest a path and destination you may not have considered (or didn't know was there). What is that destination? A very rich, varied way to connect with each other.

Loren, Howard and I truly hope you enjoy the book (of course we do). But, more than that, we hope we've opened a few eyes, imaginations, and helped to launch a few enterprises.

Thanks for reading my little missive,

Sincerely, Susan Abdulezer

Editorial Review:

See how to use Skype for secure chats and connect SkypeOut and SkypeIN. Here's the fun and easy way (r) to understand all the hype about Skype and make this cool alternative communication system work for you! You'll get great advice about hardware, directions for downloading and installing Skype, ideas for using Skype in your business, and the lowdown on making Skype calls to people with old-fashioned phones.

Discover how to:

• Install Skype and start making calls
• Create a contacts list
• Set up voicemail and call forwarding
• Use Skype for worldwide conference calls and Skypecasting
• Enhance Skype with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi wireless, and video