“Home Recording for Beginners” is designed specifically to meet the needs of the complete (or almost complete) novice to both digital recording and REAPER. The attached link will give you a PDF file which explains its content and design in detail:
http://www.cockos.com/~glazfolk/HR.pdf
In brief, it helps the new user understand just about everything they need to know to get started, including a 30 day introductory crash course using REAPER, with step by step exercises and sample files. At the end of this course, you certainly won’t know everything you’ll ever need to know but you will know enough to progress with confidence, and to identify those areas you will need to focus on.
The book also explains about different equipment, what you need, what you don’t need as well as a guide to setting up your home studio.
I’m pleased to say that Course Technology is publishing this. The main downside is that there’s no downloadable PDF, hard copy only. The up side is that you can get it at real world and on-line bookstores anywhere – Google the book title (in quotes) together with the name francis (not in quotes) and you’ll see what I mean. RRP is about $35 but don’t expect to pay more than $25 to $27 if purchasing on-line.