I bought this book because I needed to learn to use Pro Tools fast and because I learn best through tutorials (like the Apple Pro Training Series books). This book got great reviews so I chose it. Unfortunately, I need to learn Pro Tools in reference to working with film soundtracks. This book doesn't address film so you'll need to look for another book if you want that aspect. I still gave it five stars because it is a very well designed and well written book - similar to the Apple Pro series. The tutorials make sense and all of those 'but what about' questions that often pop into your head while working in tutorials are answered. Concepts are clearly explained so that you can actually apply what you learn to other situations within the software. The focus of the book is on live recordings and working with loops. If that is what you are looking for this book is A+ and I kept it as a valuable reference for my library.

I admit that I hate to read a manual.
I am a visual learner: I can watch someone else operate, say, Final Cut Pro and get the general grasp of the work environment.
If I have to wade through text, it doesn't seem to click as easily.

Having read several books on Pro Tools as well as countless instructional web pages, I was still struggling with my Pro Tools LE system.
That's where Gina Fant-Saezs' book comes into play.
I took a chance and spent the money.
And it was money well spent, for someone with my learning curve.

Easy to use, fun to read and plenty of visuals.
Where other books explained Pro Tools in word, Gina's book augmented the text with excellent images.

I highly recommend "Pro Tools for Musicians and Songwriters" for beginners as well as those who need something more than just words on pages.

The best purchase for Pro Tools rookies. I had no prior experience with Pro Tools before reading this book and I feel completely comfortable navigating both the editing and mixing modes. Gloria explains her information in a totally easy to understand format while directing you to record and patch songs together in various different ways so you can determine what method you personally prefer. I was up to speed and recording professionally sounding CD's in days! Thanks Gloria!!!

This is a good book for getting started in Pro Tools. It covers pretty much what a musician would need to know to start making songs.

The author is really good at making complex concepts and procedures understandable. She even uses a blog where she will personally answer your questions if you get stuck.

That said...
The book is using Pro Tools version 7, and because I was using Pro Tools LE 7.4, there were quite a few discrepancies between what was presented in the book, and what I had in front of me, and the reader is required to extrapolate from time to time. All this will probably be fixed if the author ever revises the book. Then she can specify exactly what version is being used.

Also, in the revision, I hope she uses XPand, the free (and extremely cool) sampler from Digidesign, and not the $600 SampleTank, which you can only try for 10 days before buying.

Another thing I think would be very beneficial to new users and should thus be included in the possible revision. is a whole section of the book on creating your own loops, right from the beginning.

Thanx Gina

Amazing book very easy to read, follow along, comprend, and a must have for quick fun beginners guide. Provides refrences to other helpful software and throughly explained how-to's.

I had a difficult time understanding how to begin working with ProTools until I bought this book. It's a great step by step tutorial that works through all the basic concepts and produces a finished music composition as an end result. I refer to it often as I write and record. Now when I refer to the ProTools manual for detailed info, I have a much better grasp on what I'm reading.

I needed a book to get more out of Pro Tools; I don't want to be an engineer savant - just record my guitar and vocal tracks and add a touch of MIDI here and there.

Some books were terribly daunting, some so simple that they were of no use.

It's true - this book is laid out to work as lessons with tracks that can be downloaded from a website. But even if you're working on your own projects - the explanations here are simple enough, you should be able to apply them to your needs. Or heck, go through the lessons - if you wanna learn, put in the time.

Even without yet going through all the lessons, I've found two or three great tips that have made my mixes (and CPU usage) much improved; and for that alone it was worth the money I paid. Big clear pictures, the Table of Contents takes you where you need to go, and the author even makes herself available via her web blog, if you have a question.

A friend who has ProTools sat at my house and picked up the book and just flipped through some chapters and saw some relevant tips he took home with him to California (I'm in Utah). I'd bet he's bought a copy by now.

Will it detail every configuration of every plug-in - no. Is it "For Dummies" - no.

This is a five-star reviewed book - it's not for everybody, but if you're starting out and need some good clean answers, start here!

This is a book of examples and exercises so don't expect to look up a particular function or problem that you are having, the Table on Contents is not up to that job. Again this is a book of simple examples and exercises directed to beginners that need to be lead completely from scratch but I found the text too drawn out and confusing with such items as references to a real bus to illustrate a mixer. The items that I was interested in were noted in the text that they would be covered later but no reference as to where in the text they would be covered. Obviously not a book for me, I have read and seen better.

This book is "the bomb"! I know I will sound over-enthusiastic by the end of this, but I simply cannot say enough good things about this book. First, I read a LOT of technical manuals and tutorials, and this book stands heads and shoulders above 99% of the books I've read.... and I'm not just talking about Pro Tools books, but ALL technical manuals and tutorials.

I already own two other Pro Tools books and a couple of expensive instructional DVDs, and NONE of them come close to providing the goods that this book does. As a live sound guy for the last 20 years I've been trying to learn Pro Tools on and off for the last eight months, but even with the stuff I've bought I never really felt like I had the fundamentals down and learned WHY Pro Tools works the way it does... the other books (and DVDs) are either too light in their coverage -- assuming too much and skipping over essentials for a newbie -- or they provide "expert" level information that makes no sense to someone just trying to learn the basics. But like Goldylocks I've found this book is Juuuuuust Riiiiight! :-)

Seriously, within a couple of pages of reading this thing I *knew* it was a different kind of book. With every page turn I became more and more impressed that someone had FINALLY managed to convey highly technical information in a way that is easy to understand, fun and entertaining.

The bottom line is that if you can't figure out how to use Pro Tools by reading this thing, you probably shouldn't be using Pro Tools at all. I can't recommend it highly enough, and hope for something else from Gina in the future!

I am a brand new user to Pro Tools and even though I have many years of experience using Cubase I was ready for the next step. This book definately breaks everything down and walks you through every step and leaves no stone unturned! It made Pro Tools very easy to navigate through for me. Much appreciated!

Gives a good set of step-by-step procedures for each learning objective. Definitely geared towards solo musicians and small bands looking to make nonprofessional demo recordings. Fant-Saez assumes you have basic musical knowledge and little or no computer knowledge. This book is missing discussions on what resources to lean from and use after the book is mastered. It also doesn't cover basic recording techniques, such as miking. The downloadable examples and samples used in the book leave something to be desired in terms of complexity and depth; something that shows off the capabilities of protools would have been a nice bonus.

It seems like quite a claim to say that this is the "greatest book ever" but I really believe it is. Gina takes you step by step through every aspect of Pro Tools so you can learn the program correctly from the start. Make sure you do the exercises and follow along and you will be recording great sounding music in no time. I have owned several other books and several other recoding programs but I could never get them to work like the combination of this book with Pro Tools. She teaches you all the shortcuts you need to save time and focus more on making music rather than wasting time trying to figure stuff out. I am really very happy with this book and would recommend it to anyone looking to get into home/studio recording with Pro Tools no matter your level of experience. I am so thankful for this book!

Pro Tools for Musicians and Songwriters fills a serious gap in the Pro Tools documentation - Quick Start tutorials. These are useful both for less technical beginners, and for people like me, who are both technically deep and experienced in audio software.

The problem is that the Pro Tools documentation is written as a reference manual (872 pages) that is most effective when starting at its extensive index. Reading start to finish in this dense, if well structured, document would take a week (it wouldn't be a fun week either), and by the time you were done you would have forgotten most of what you had read 500 pages earlier.

Pro Tools for Musicians and Songwriters answers the question "Can you show me the most important ProTools features and techniques I need to know to start being productive right away in music production?" And it answers this very well, with sparse, easy to read text accompanied by crisp full color screenshots for almost every step. These screenshots are invaluable in quickly helping the reader/student to find and verify dialogs and UI elements. When I am reading this book, it is like getting a personal tour of the product from a friendly expert.

A side benefit for me was that since I had done a little experimentation before reading the book, I was able to read most of the book on a plane flight, without even needing the PC in front of me. For my style, that was a real treat since I am usually extremely impatient with typical tutorials that are so rigid and poorly written that they require you to do an agonizing step by step process on the PC to even know what they're talking about.

So my hat is off to the author, who really understands the product and the process of recording music. She has done a great service to Digidesign, and of course to the many of us who really like ProTools and want to become fluent in it.

Stephen
Portland, OR

I am new to pro tools, I had no idea of what I was getting into...I was always afraid to jump into the world of home recording because I did not understand the lingo, electronics, or anything about computers or home studios... This book has taken the fear out of failure...I am new and already laying down my new tracks. There is a lot to learn but the book and illustrations walk you through the process with a clear understanding of how to do it and why it should be done in this manner and is results oriented. So..a new user of pro tools and the Percussion / keyboard player for a new band that just went number one on XM Radio " Ben Conga", pro tools will open up the world of writing music in a new dimension...buy the book, use the book and see you when you win your grammy. Julio L. Matta

I am a keyboardist with over 40 years of playing experience but no experience with DAW's. When I first bought Pro-Tools 7.3 LE, I was totally overwhelmed. I could not open the program without fear and confusion. I tried to watch the video tutorials but these were dry and seem to assume that I had some knowledge regarding computer based recording.....I didn't. I bought Gina's book and followed the exercizes faithfully for about 3-4 weeks. Since then, I have recorded at least 5 new tunes of my own plus I have put down some other musician's tunes. I have since purchased Reason 4.0, and I feel very comfortable using them both. I have followed Gina's book up with a few more intermediate books and I really feel comfortable using my audio software. Instead of approaching my computer (an iMAC 2.3 khz intel 24") with fear....I now look forward to using pro tools on a daily basis. As a matter of fact, my commputer based recording studio has become my 'refuge from the world'. I could never have gotten here so quickly and comfortably without Pro Tools for Musicians.

I'm completely new to Pro Tools and have gone crazy trying to figure it out on my own- until now. This book is so thorough that is answers your questions before you even get a chance to think them!! Excellent choice if you want learn what you'll need to know in order to start creating music ASAP!!!!

-jl

Slow paced, easy to read guide made for musicians with little or no technical no know. However it does cover all the advanced functions of Pro Tools LE as well.

After reading half of this book after getting out of the library, I decided I could at least put up a review on Amazon. I've been using Pro Tools HD for almost 4 years and consider myself an advanced user. That being said, there are tips and tricks and techniques in this book that I either never heard of, or never thought of (and aren't in the manual). And believe me, Ive read every pro tools book available.

While this book is geared mainly to newbies, even advanced users, if they patiently wade through familiar material, will find valuable nuggets of information that will either save you time or make things easier in your day-to-day pro tools use. I'm reading it thoroughly as you never know when one of these nuggets will happen upon you!

The book is full color, heavy, and substantial feeling. Quality print job. There are a few typos, so the copy editor should be fired. But Gina is knowledgeable and writes clearly in plain English.

I've renewed it twice from the library, but am buying it as this is a book I want to keep on hand.

Excellent!