How to Make Music in Your Bedroom
By Nicola Slade
Virgin Books, 23rd October 2007, Paperback, £6.99

The definitive guide to becoming a DIY Music Artist

With the multitude of technological advances of modern day such as the internet and a wide range of adaptable software available to anyone with a PC, it’s about time we made them work for us. This book explains how to do exactly that with regards to recording, mixing and editing your very own music from your very own bedroom.

The concept behind, ‘How to Make Music in Your Bedroom’ is automatically supported by the recent success of artists such as Lilly Allen and Seth Lakeman, who used the types of techniques which can be found in this book to catapult themselves onto the music scene. The Artic Monkeys are another new band who also made use of the vast range of file sharing networks found on the web to promote their self made album.

Nicola Slade shows how anyone can record and mix killer music from the comfort of their bedroom. The author explains what hardware, software and mixing equipment is required, and includes a history of the digitisation of music, advice on marketing and promoting your music and contributions from DIY music artists who have made it big.

Key facts about the ever expanding and changing world that is the music industry:

• Seth Lakeman spent just £300 pounds on his album which he made in his kitchen. He has now been nominated for the Mercury Prize.
• MySpace claims to have 35 million unique users.
• Napster was one of the first file sharing programmes to appear on the web in 1999, with this came the birth of illegally downloaded music.
• The number of legally downloaded music is rapidly rising whilst the number of physical purchases of music is slowing declining. This has therefore changed the way in which music is marketed and produced.

The Author, Nicola Slade, is a well respected music journalist who started out at the respected The Fly magazine. She then moved on to edit music websites such as the Mean Fiddler; currently she is writing for Music Week and is the co-author of Download: The Lowdown.