The book of Linux music and sound - Review

Telecomworldwire, Nov 13, 2000

TELECOMWORLDWIRE-13 November 2000-REVIEW:The book of Linux music and sound (C)1994-2000 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD http://www.m2.com

Are you interested in playing and recording digital sound on your computer? Experimenting with digital signal processing software? Or dreaming of distributing your own music as MODs, MIDI or MP3s? If any of your answers to these questions are yes then this book is tailored to meet your needs.

The author Dave Phillips has been a performing musician for over 30 years, is an expert in MIDI, Csound and Linux and maintains the 'Sound and MIDI Software for Linux' website, so he is more than qualified to fulfil your requirements - which he does successfully.

The first chapter provides the reader with a brief introduction to the book and the world of Linux music and sound. Phillips includes a section which I have not encountered in an introduction before and appears to be a very useful idea. He informs the reader what the book does not contain and that they should already have knowledge on the missing information, and if not he tells you where you can obtain the relevant information before beginning.

To help the reader get started in using the Linux software he produces a chapter concerning the system to use and how to set it up. He also takes in to consideration the fact that the reader may not have a huge budget to spend and therefore describes a minimum requirement and an advanced system.

The book basically incorporates evaluations of selected software and brief tutorials describing installation and use of the software you will be using. The majority of the software discussed is on the CD-ROM which accompanies the book as well as many more on the home page of Phillips' website.

The style of the book is meant to inspire a hands-on attitude toward the software reviewed and encourage the reader to try and go beyond the given examples. To help the reader understand the processes images and screenshots are provided throughout the book, this also adds a visual appeal rather than viewing a book full of text.

Phillips provides the reader with 15 chapters of easily absorbed information, an afterword, a glossary, information about the CD-ROM, and a bibliography. The 15 chapters will teach the reader to record, mix and add effects to tracks; work with Mod, MIDI, and MP3 files; do hard-disk multi-track recording; use realtime synthesizers and software sound synthesis programs like Csound; produce high-quality scores with music notation programs; and share sound resources over a network. Which is probably everything you will want to know.

CONCLUSION:Very indepth book which does not include too much jargon allowing the reader to familiarise themselves with the topic easily.

Title:The book of Linux music and sound Author:Dave Phillips Published by:No starch press ISBN:1-886411-34-4 Price:USD39.99 Reviewer:Caroline Turner

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