Some notes to help you get started recording your own CD

by Arthur Wilson

• What will be the end product?
• Why do you want your own CD?
• How do you make your own CD?
• How to go about making your own CD
• Recording guitar and vocal
• Recording a group of musicians
• Before going into the studio
• Choosing a studio and a producer
• Mixing
• Mastering
• Packaging
• Distribution
• Web presence

What will be the end product?

• CD of your own songs
• quality product
• colour booklet, photos and lyrics

Why do you want your own CD?

• get gigs
• market songs
• sell at gigs, in shops, via the internet

How do you make your own CD?

• home tape recorder
  • poor quality
• mini disk
  • good quality
  • not everyone has a md player
  • yesterdays technology, MP3 players now used rather than mini disk
• D.I.Y. home studio
  • expensive
  • high learning curve
  • difficult to record your own music
  • like trying to cut your own hair
• get someone to record it for you

How to go about making your own CD

• guitar and vocal
  • easiest option to record
  • cheapest
  • whole CD of guitar and vocal may not hold the listeners attention
  • may be good songwriter but no a greatest musician
• record an arrangement of songs
  • variety between tracks
  • holds the listeners attention
  • more complicated to record
  • more expensive

Recording guitar and vocal

• equipment required
  • digital hard disk recorder
    • 4 or 8 track
    • built in effects board for guitar and vocals
    • cd burning for creating a master
  • 3 mics
  • 3 boom stands
  • 1 popper stopper
  • zero reference active speakers for mixing
  • quiet room
• hire equipment
• book a studio and engineer
  • between £20 and £50 per hour
• recording procedures
  • record vocal on track one and the guitars on tracks 2 and 3
  • choose vocal and acoustic guitar effects
  • add bass middle and high frequency EQ to each separate track
  • add effect
  • mix and record onto two tracks (left and right)
  • burn to CD

Recording a group of musicians

• equipment required
  • soundproof booths to isolate instruments
  • 8, 16 or 24 tracks
  • more mics and stands
  • guitar and bass amps
  • drum kit
  • special drum mics
• recording techniques - live drums
  • mic up drums and symbols in
  • record guitars, bass and lead vocal
• recording techniques - computer drums
  • midi
  • audio sample
  • create tempo map
  • record guitar and vocal in sync with a computer software
  • add drums using computer software
• adding parts
  • can record almost any number of parts
  • choose best take for final mix
• adding midi parts
  • use keyboard and computer to create layers of sound

Before going into the studio

• rehearse
  • make sure that you and all the musicians know what they are expected to play
• discuss with the producer and engineer
• estimate how much recording time you will need
  • you wont get it exactly right, better to over-estimate

Choosing a studio and a producer

• state of the art studio not as important as good producer/engineer
• listen to recordings made in the studio and by the same producer
• choose someone you can get on with

Mixing

• get different mixes
• try on different hifi system
  • car, home, portable, pc

Mastering

• producer can do editing: fade in/outs, track gaps
• producer or company making maximize the levels
  • be wary, people who claim to do mastering just run it though a process which may compress the loud parts and boost the quiet parts but this can change the way your sounds

Packaging

• CD label
  • copyright statement
  • colour/design or just text
• Booklet and backliner
  • DIY or get a designer
  • get a bromide poof before going ahead as it may look different on a ink jet printer

Distribution

• sell at gigs
• through the internet
• local shops
• contact distributor

Web presence

• domain name
  • www.yourname.com, www.yourname.co.uk etc.
• 20 meg of disk
• home page, artist profile
• biography
• reviews
• lyrics
• discography
• streaming space
  • windows media, mp3, real audio quicktime
  • 40kbps (will stream over a 56k modem connection)
  • 128kbps (can stream over broadband connections)
• ecommerce shop
  • better to sell through someone else
  • expensive to do your own
• artist showcase web sites
• peoplesound
• mp3.com
• closed systems
• dynamically created content from a database
• cannot be index by search engines
• need to be in web site before finding artist pages
• little or no control over design
• full of adverts
• costs money, subscription

Arthur Wilson 2006