Preface to the first edition
Although technical in content, Music Engineering does not require a deep knowledge of complex electronics concepts. However, as with all books which cover a wide range of subject material, something has to be assumed and, in this case, it is a knowledge of basic electronics. This I did for fear that ‘pulling off the road every five minutes’ to explain another basic concept would interrupt our journey unacceptably. Moreover in ‘dumbing-down’ the text too much, I worried I would run the risk of irritating more knowledgeable readers. In spite of this, and although there are some points of interest on our journey which will require a technical background, there is much here for the novice too. Broad technical issues, where they are necessary for comprehension, are introduced as and when they are required. For instance, a technical understanding of amplitude distortion effects and mechanisms is required for Chapter 4, so this precedes the description of valve circuitry contained within the chapter. In this way I hope the following will appeal to a wide audience and will be as much at home on a bookshelf next door to books on MIDI, Home Recording and Orchestration as alongside the heavy tomes in an engineer’s bookcase.
One warning – there is some mathematics early on! Now equations are great if you like them and ‘bad news’ if you don’t. Where I have used them (and it’s only very rarely), they’re for the benefit of the former, who want to get to the ‘nuts and bolts’ of nature’s mechanisms. The latter can simply skip ahead. If you don’t like maths and have no feel for it, you’ll lose nothing by pushing onwards.
Acknowledgements
When I was six years old my father built me a little transistor radio with earphones. I was thrilled. Some nights after it was finished my mother discovered me sitting up late at night in my bed crying. When she asked what was the matter, I said, ‘Mimi’s dead’. I had listened to the whole of Puccini’s La Bohème! It’s not too simplistic to say that this book owes its genesis to my father’s inspiration. First with that little radio and many times thereafter – like the time he helped me design and build my first guitar amp. That I do it now, and here, may compensate a little for my omission to thank him before it was too late. Thanks are also due to my friend Simon Nield. Our late-night, alchohol-fuelled musings on many of the subjects considered hereafter benefited my knowledge and understanding as much as did harm to my liver! Thanks, too, to those who supplied pictures and information. Particularly Roland UK, Brad Coates of Melbourne Music Centre, Jim Dowler of ADT and Andy Smith of BASF. And to the staff of Butterworth-Heinemann for their assistance in preparing this book.
Technology note
Finally, you may notice, flicking through the pages, that many of the circuit examples are analogue rather than digital. There are a number of reasons for this. First, especially in the home and project studio market, most equipment is still analogue (except the tape or disk recorders). Second, and this is overridingly the most important reason, digital circuits of the signal processing devices described simply do not exist! Which is to say, the functionality is performed within Digital Signal Processing (DSP) integrated circuits which are programmed like microprocessors to perform the operations required. The hardware configuration of a DSP solution thereby elucidates the function of circuit not at all. Of course, the important point is to understand the technique and function of the particular audio process; whether it be flanging, phasing, mixing or compression and so on. So, where I hoped an analogue circuit might aid that understanding, I have chosen it. In other cases I have used block diagrams which may be regarded as hardware blocks or software processes.