About the Author

Brian Smithers is a classically-trained musician, conductor, and composer who has been performing and teaching music for more than twenty years. Taking the concept of the "Renaissance man" to heart at an early age, he has always maintained a diverse professional and artistic life, performing in everything from jazz combos to symphony orchestras, while composing and arranging commercial music. The culmination of this ironic juxtaposition saw him for several years as conductor of a traditional all-acoustic wind band — the world-famous Walt Disney World Band by day — and a writer on music technology for Keyboard, Music & Computers, and Electronic Musician by night.

An accomplished recording engineer, Mr. Smithers was at the vanguard of the movement to use notebook computers for live remote recording, performance, and production. He founded a Web site which for several years was the only sustaining Internet resource on laptop-based music production.

As Course Director of Audio Workstations and Advanced Audio Workstations at Full Sail Real World Education in Winter Park, Florida, Mr. Smithers coordinates and guides the curriculum of what is arguably the largest digital audio workstation lab environment in the world. He teaches Music Technology at Stetson University in Deland, Florida, where he also trains the student recording staff, and engineers the School of Music's annual recordings.

He has been a SONAR user since Cakewalk 3.0.