There are various reasons why I decided to write this book. The twelve years of experience as head of the Tonmeister training at the Erich-Thienhaus-Institut (ETI) at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold played a decisive role. Over the years, a steadily growing lecture manuscript was created here, which finally led to the idea and the first beginnings of this book.

On the other hand, over time the desire was to write down the experience of about 30 years of active studio work, since I was always referring to these experiences in my lectures. Thus, the real connections between education/occupation on the one hand and theory/practice on the other hand only became clear to me when I started working at ETI.

With a link you can download the 3D animation videos belonging to the book and the partly belonging sound samples from the homepage of the publisher. The german version of the book is published by Schiele & Schön in Berlin. The english version ...

During the constant adaptation of my script to the ongoing lessons, I was able to think about the optimal representation of the relationships between musician, instrument and recording, as well as about the structure of the book to be written.

Should one, like most books, start with Adam and Eve, i.e. basics of acoustics etc., or should the book contain direct and implementable instructions and suggestions for the practitioner. In these considerations, the second thought has prevailed.

Only, for understandable reasons, one cannot do without all theoretical basics, otherwise some phenomena cannot be explained. The way out came in the form of a small but highly informative appendix (glossary). I have also noticed again and again that there are deficits in the tonmeisters' knowledge of instruments. Therefore, each instrument is introduced at the beginning of its chapter with its data.

From time to time I highlight the special characteristics of the instrument, as far as they are necessary for the understanding in dealing with miking techniques and sound design. If you want to achieve an appealing result of a recording quickly and well, you must always have the peculiarities and the radiation behavior of instruments present.