Almost three years in the making, Alan Parsons’ 10-hour video series, Art & Science of Sound Recording, is now available in a boxed set on three DVDs. Narrated by actor and musician Billy Bob Thornton, the DVDs are divided into 24 sections, starting with a brief history of recording.
Alan Parsons shows you how to set up a proper mix.
Technical sections include custom diagrams and musical examples with in-depth looks at EQ, compression, reverb and delays. Recording equipment is spotlighted in Microphones, Consoles & Controllers, Monitoring, and Computers & Digital Audio, while a set of specific recording guides looks at Vocals, Guitars, Bass, Keyboards and Drums. A series of practical recording sections offer looks at Recording Acoustic Guitar With Vocal, Recording A Choir, A Band Tracking Session, Internet Recording, and Dealing With Disasters.
Parsons’ illustrious career—as a recording engineer, producer, composer and artist—acts as both backdrop and inspiration for the series. Parsons worked with The Beatles on the albums Abbey Road and Let It Be, engineered Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of Moon, and produced a string of multi-Platinum hits for The Hollies, Pilot, Ambrosia, Al Stewart and others, as well as The Alan Parsons Project.
For this DVD series, Parsons interviewed engineers and producers including Jack Joseph Puig, John Fields, Elliot Scheiner, Jack Douglas, Tony Brown and Chuck Ainlay, Sylvia Massy, Jimmy Douglass and Allen Sides. Artists and musicians interviewed include Michael McDonald, Taylor Hawkins from The Foo Fighters, Nathan East, Rami Jaffe, Carol Kaye and Erykah Badu.
The DVD set features soundtracks in English, German and Spanish, and its menu system offers the ability to search by topic. Footage includes Alan Parsons’ latest release, All Our Yesterdays, which was written, recorded and captured on video especially for this series.
For more information, visit www.artandscienceofsound.com.
