Recording Practice is musical practice, a technical but artistic affair. Understanding Records explains the musical language of Recording Practice in a way that any interested reader can understand. Drawing on readily available hit records produced since 1945, each section of this book explains a handful of core production and engineering techniques in chronological record-making sequence, elucidating how those techniques work, what they sound like, how they function musically, where listeners can hear those techniques at work in the broader Top 40 soundscape, and where they fit in the broader record-making process at large.

Jay Hodgson is on faculty at Western University, where he primarily teaches courses on songwriting and project paradigm record production. He is also one of two mastering engineers at MOTTOsound - a boutique audio services house situated in England,whose credits include work on records by the likes of Rush, Three Days Grace, The New Pornographers, Glen Campbell, Billy Ray Cyrus, and The Barenaked Ladies. He was awarded a Governor General's academic medal in 2006, in recognition of his research on audio recording, and is co-editor of Mixing Music (2016).