A new book came out recently specifically targeting remixing, the book entitled 'The Remix Manual' is written by Simon Langford, a writer who has written articles for Sound on Sound and remixed over 300 tracks. When the book was in it's early stages in late 2009 I got sent the book proposal and was asked to look over it to see whether it included everything needed and whether I thought it was a decent book for the publishing company Elsevier to publish. I gave them my thoughts and said it was a great idea and concept for a book, so I had an extremely tiny input before the book was commissioned. Well after a long time that book has finally been released.

I've got my copy and have now read through quite a bit of it and have to say that the final book is very good and I recommend it for anyone here who wants to learn the art of remixing or wants to improve their remixing further.

The book starts out with an intro into the history of remixing and goes into some music theory, which is good for people coming from a DJ background with little or no knowledge of this. This then follows into a section called 'A Remixer's Insight' which asks some questions to a number of famous remixers and musicians such as Glen Nichols, Max Graham and Vince Clarke and more. I like this section as it does gives you a nice insight into what professional remixers think of remixing, what they are using to remix, how they approach remixing and what it's like being a professional remixer. It is a unique section compared to other generalized electronic music making books.

Next up in the book is sound design and time design. The sound design sections gives the low down on synthesis and sampling with the time design sections going into timestretching and beat mapping. This is followed by a section on mix down and another on mastering giving you all the necessary technical info you need to start creating professional sounding remixes.

The next section is probably the best and will be the most attractive to most of you which is where Simon walks through the creation of a remix from start to finish and he gives you a great insight into the remixing process. He stars right from the beginning where you load up the remix parts then building up the layers of a remix right up to finishing up your mix. The walk through clocks up 82 out of the 400+ pages and is the best remixing walk through I have come across, where the process and techniques explained can be applied by anyone doing a remix.

The book gives a very good insight into the knowledge needed to remix a track with the best thing being that it also goes into the process and techniques of remixing which is barely mentioned in other music making books. It doesn't concentrate on any specific software so you'll have to know your way around your sequencer but I think that is one of the strengths of this book as it won't go out of date quickly as new software versions come out.

Overall I think this is a great book for anyone getting started or who wants to greatly improve their remixes. The book is appropriately titled as it really is a manual on remixing and I'm pretty sure that most of the people reading this could gain extra knowledge on remixing out of this book which is why I'm recommending to you all and maybe it just might help you win one of the remix contests we list here on Remix Comps.

• You can buy the book as an ebook in PDF for Digital Editions from
  ebooks.com or as a physical book from Amazon