In the professional world, mastering is usually done using lots of very expensive outboard gear, as the final step before a master copy of a CD is sent to be duplicated into millions of consumer discs.

In the not necessarily professional world of home recording, mastering can done with the plug-in effects available for music recording programs, as Anderton explains.

He also documents that the mastering process doesn't begin when recording ends; he views — entirely correctly — the entire recording process as leading up to this phase. Which is only as strong as its weakest element.

Finally, his book contains a quote well worth spending some time lingering over:

For me, the paramount lesson from doing years of studio work behind songs was that everything supports the lead singer. Your licks are there only to make the lead vocal more effective.

And for a guitarist who wants to write and record songs, that may be the most important lesson of all to learn and embrace.

One More For The Road: "The Studio As Compositional Tool", By Brian Eno: OK, this is a cheat on my part. This isn't a book, but a long, two-part article that ran in Down Beat magazine in July and August of 1983. It's a transcription of a speech that Brian Eno gave in 1979 to a group of musicians in New York, on the potential of the recording studio.

I read this article shortly around the time I acquired my original cassette four-track recorder, and it was absolutely eye opening. I'd call it the Ten Commandments of recording, but it's just the opposite: Eno demonstrates that when it comes to the studio, there are no rules that aren't made to be broken.

And that's my top ten (plus one lengthy two-part article) - a few books, which for me at least, have stood the test of time, happily remaining on my shelves, and pulled out from time to time, either to answer a question, or purely for pleasure. Given how frequently I still refer to the newer books on the list, I have a feeling most of them will go the distance as well.