Born, in Yorkshire, England, Paul White relocated to Malvern to study electronics at a major government research establishment before moving into industrial electronics working on laser measuring equipment. It’s there that he gained his first writing experience — trying to make equipment handbooks understandable!

Having played in bands since he was at school, it was only natural that Paul should combine his experience in music and electronics by setting up a home recording studio in the 1970s, the first of which was based around a Teac open-reel 4-track, a budget mixer and a lot of home-built outboard gear. There were no recording books or magazines around at this time so everything was either self taught or gleaned for friends working in commercial studios. Paul also gained experience in live sound mixing, building and operating PA systems for local bands.

In 1984 he was offered the position of technical editor for magazines ‘Home Studio Recording’ and ‘Electronics and Music Maker’, later to become Music Technology.  One of his first jobs was to design electronic projects for the readers to build but when an opening came for editor on ‘Home Studio Recording’, he took little convincing. During this time Paul took on board the new advances in computer/MIDI sequencing and updated his home studio to 16-track tape. Paul also wrote some of the first practical books on home recording including the Creative Recording series and has currently around 20 titles sold internationally via Music Sales.

In 1991, Paul joined the Sound on Sound team where he edited Audio Media, Recording Musician, Sound on Stage and finally Sound on Sound. His home studio continues to evolve, currently based on an Apple/Logic Pro platform, and he has worked with a number of high profile musicians as well as recording four of his own albums, two of which are on commercial release and might kindly be described as obscure ambient ‘collectors’ items’. He says that his ambition for the future is to be there to see it!

External link: Sound On Sound.