Hearing Theory in Action

[bsleeth]

I have been reading books (many reccomended here) on setting up a home recording studio. My question is, are there any book/CD combinations or websites that take actual songs and help you hear and disect the theory behind the recording and mixing?

Completely made up example: When the Allman Brothers recorded "Soulshine," they were usings this type of studio equipment. You can hear the analog distortion from the reel-to-reel...the <type/brand> microphone they used created...

I know one of the best ways is to try it for myself, but before I bought any equipment, I wanted to hear what the options were, especially around songs that I already enjoy the sound of.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

[AlChuck]

That's a pretty tall order there...

A few years back Recording magazine had a neat idea and ran a mixed-format CD "magazine" called Playback which included some dissections of sessions. You would hear the raw tracks, then hear things being done in stages, and you could get some sense of the change. It was a pretty good idea and fairly well presented over the course of its life.

These things are no longer available and they stopped making the periodical version in 1998, but they have since but together a series of CD/book volumes that can be purchased, called the Platinum Playback series . They're costly ($44.95 individually; the Moulton Audio Lectures are also bundled at $168.95 for all four) but I suspect they are pretty good efforts based on reading some of Moulton's articles and some of the stuff he did on the original Playback series.

There were also some session articles I glanced over at ProRec.com some time ago... let me see... ah,
Point to Point:Creating a Mix from the Ground Up. That's the first, there are two more in this series: Point to Point 2: Building a Mix from the Ground Up... Again and Point to Point III - Debra Soule: Building the Beast. The latter two articles have links to related articles on the same site.

Maybe that info will give you a starting point.

[bsleeth]

That was exactly what I was looking for. They are up there in $$, but if you're buying equipment that's also up there in $$ it may just be worth it.

Thank you!