This is an accessible and comprehensive survey of core production and engineering techniques used in popular music since 1945. 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.