by Roger Nichols
Musicians with their basement project studios are always talking about cutting
demos and presenting them to a record company in the hopes of landing a
big record deal. Things like that do happen, but usually not to anybody
you know personally. It is always someone else that gets the deal just like
it is always someone else that wins the lottery. But you keep buying lottery
tickets, don't you?
What if you decided to do the whole thing yourself? You have already decided
to record your songs yourself, so why not do the editing, the mastering,
the album cover design and production, make the CDs, and then sell the finished
product to a distributor or press up a bunch of CDs to sell at your gigs?
Well, you can do all of those things, and just to make sure it is possible,
I decided to try it all myself with two different projects.
Bucky Baxter is a guitar player who plays steel guitar on the road for Bob
Dylan. He wanted to do an album of his own, but couldn't get the interest
of any record company. He happened to have a project studio of his own in
a small, converted one bedroom house in Nashville. He called up all of his
friends and asked them to play, recorded an album's worth of tunes, and
then asked me to mix the project. Joy Monroe, a friend of my wife, was the
executive producer on the project (she paid the bills for the album).
In the beginning of January, Joy decided that she wanted to go to MIDEM,
which is a big record company trade show in France every year where distributors
and record companies and independent small companies get together to sell
each other product. She was going to make a bunch of DAT copies of Bucky's
album to hand out to prospective record companies. She asked me if I could
make her 10 DAT copies. (My first reaction was to say "Poof... you
are 10 DAT copies", but I thought better of it.) I realized that this
would be the perfect opportunity to show off my basement, so I offered to
make her 10 CDs instead.
The first thing I had to do was re-sequence the album for a better flow
of material. I transferred each tune from DAT onto the optical discs of
my Akai DD-1000. In the optical disc recorder I cleaned up the front and
back end of each song and adjusted the playback levels for better transitions
from tune to tune. You would be amazed at how much more "finished"
a song sounds if you don't hear any hiss or noise just before the music
starts. On the first playback of the entire album in the new order, I decided
to change some of the spaces between songs. A few little tweaks (hi-tech
term) to the edit list, and I was ready to roll.
The length of the album was about 48 minutes, so I used 63 minute CD blanks.
I loaded one into the Marantz CD-R 610 CD recorder, set the input to digital,
pressed record-pause, and played the album back from the Akai to make sure
that the signal was getting there properly. This comes from years of experience
in making tape copies when I would start the record machine, start the playback
machine, and wonder why nothing was showing up on the record machine meters.
It was always "one more button" that I forgot to press before
I started. After doing the same thing with my CD recorder a few times, I
thought it was better to attempt a dry run than ruin a CD by recording blank
space at the beginning. Remember, you can't go back and erase mistakes on
a CD. The dry run worked fine, and I was almost ready to go.
Right here I would like to touch on START IDs. START IDs are the codes that
are put on the CD so that you can find the beginning of each tune. A START
ID on a CD is much like the START ID on a DAT tape. On a DAT machine you
can select AUTO START ID and the machine will automatically place one on
the tape at the beginning of each song. Because the DAT machine doesn't
know to record the ID until after the music gets loud enough to trigger
it, the START ID is always a little late. In early DAT machines, when you
skip to the next tune, the machine would fast forward to the next START
ID and then start playing. You usually missed the first few milliseconds
of the song (I know that is my favorite part of any song, the first few
milliseconds). Some players, like the Sony PCM-2500, would allow you to
go to each tune and move the START ID earlier to avoid this problem. Current
DAT machines are much smarter. When you skip to a START ID, the machine
knows that the ID is late, so the machine goes up to the ID, and then backs
up a little to get a running start at the tune.
CD players don't do that. CD players expect the START ID to have been placed
about 1/2 second before the music actually starts. There was no need for
all of the fancy software because there was not ever supposed to be recordable
CD recorders with AUTO START ID. When a CD master is produced, a sheet of
paper with time code information lists the time code of every START ID on
the CD. This information is entered into the computer that cuts the glass
master. The computer then places the START ID information in the Table Of
Contents of the CD (located at the beginning of the CD before the music
starts.) So, anyway, the point is that if you use the AUTO START ID feature
of the CD recorder, whenever you skip to the next tune, you will miss my
favorite part of the song.
The reason for this little side trip is that I didn't want anyone to miss
the first few milliseconds of Bucky's songs, so I listened to the transitions
between songs and wrote down the times for each START ID. This hopefully
was after one song faded out, and about half a second before the next song
began.
The SADiE hard disk editing system automatically produces an edit list and
will automatically send START ID commands down the digital audio link to
the CD recorder. The Akai DD-1000 does not provide this feature, so I had
to watch the time display and press the manual START ID button before the
start of each tune.
HHB, in London, sells a box that connects digitally between a DAT machine
and a CD recorder. The box has some delay memory for the digital audio,
and converts DAT START IDs into CD START IDs. Because the audio is delayed
but the START IDs aren't, the CD start ID is placed before the music starts.
What a concept! I have heard rumors that some of the next generation of
CD recorders may have this feature built in, but not in time for this article.
So here we go, the Akai is ready, the CD recorder is armed, all that is
left to do is grab whatever you grab in intense situations and jump in.
I took the CD recorder out of RECORD PAUSE, and pressed PLAY on the Akai.
Everything worked fine, and the first blank disc was burning its way toward
CDness (EDITOR.. don't change this, it is a real word, honest). A the correct
times I punched the START ID button and after the CD was done I pressed
STOP. First one down, nine more hours to go. (Maybe this wasn't such a good
idea to volunteer for this job after all, but hey, I do live in the Volunteer
State).
Remember, I said that in CD production, the table of contents is written
to the CD before the audio. Well, when you are recording your own CDs, the
machine does not know where the tune is going to be until after it is recorded,
right? So, the way it works is the recorder skips over the table of contents
area while you are recording. It waits until you have recorded all of the
selections and pressed the START ID button wherever you wanted. After you
are done recording, you press a button labeled FINISH. When this happens,
the recorder goes back and writes the table of contents area of the disc.
After this is complete, the disc is no longer recordable, and can be played
back on any CD player.
During the recording of the CDs, I thought about printing up labels for
the front of the CD jewel box to list the contents. You know, the names
of the songs, who produced it, who played on it, and who spent ten hours
making the CD copies. My initial impression was to do something like Figure
1, but I was trying to help the project, not hurt it.
The light bulb went off in my head as I was cruising through my computer
and realized that I had a copy of Adobe Photoshop 2.5 that I had stolen
from a friend. I had been looking for an excuse to play with it for a long
time, and now was my big chance. I decided to see if I could make these
ten CDs look like they had just come from the New Release bin at Tower Records.
After talking with Joy about what should be on the cover, she told me that
she had spent a lot of money on portraits of Bucky, and could I use one
of them for the cover. She sent me a 2 1/4 by 2 1/4 transparency of the
picture she wanted to use. I found a service bureau in Nashville that would
scan the transparency and place it on a Kodak Photo CD for $40 including
the CD. Any additional photos would be added to the CD or $20 each. I got
the CD back the next day, and proceeded to load it into Photoshop. It looked
great!
My kids had (I used had because they are not getting it back) an Apple Color
Style Writer 2400 color ink jet printer. The printer's resolution is 360
dots per inch, and so that was the resolution I selected for the Photoshop
project.
Figure 2 shows the scanned photo that I was going to use for the cover of
the CD booklet. I wanted to put something behind the photo besides the white
background. Bucky is sort of a Country guitar player and we are in Nashville,
so what wood (pun, not bad spelling) be more appropriate than the side of
an old barn. Placing the barn wood behind Bucky was much easier in Photoshop,
and I didn't have to scrape off my shoes after the session. I then created
the text for the title. In a highly creative moment I decided on "Bucky
Baxter" for the CD title.
I wanted a background for the text and credits on the inside of the CD booklet.
I found a stock photo of an old window. I loaded it into Photoshop and then
proceeded to mess with the brightness and contrast controls to make the
picture light enough so that the text would show up that was going to be
placed on top of the photo. I typed in all of the text and then experimented
with different sizes and fonts until I came up with something I liked. I
then placed it on top of the photo to produce the results depicted here.
The next step was to place the credit picture next to the cover photo so
that they would print on a single piece of paper. This would allow you to
fold the printed copy and slip it into the CD jewel box just like the big
guys do. I changed the size of the canvas in Photoshop and copied the credit
picture to a place alongside of the cover photo. Done.
The final task was for the back of the CD. This area is bigger than the
CD booklet and includes two little strips that become the front and back
spine of the CD. This vertical area is where the titles go so that you can
read the name of the CD when they are stored on your CD shelf.
The dimensions of the CD booklet is 119mm high by 119mm wide when folded.
The back of the CD is 116mm high by 152mm wide including the end strips
which are each 7mm wide. I wanted the same information to be presented on
the back of the CD, so I decided to use the same picture (which they do
on most commercial CDs). To fill in the extra area, I cloned part of the
wood around the window and copied it into the empty space. I then typed
the text that I wanted to show on the end spines, rotated it vertically,
and placed it over the picture. After printing, the picture needs to be
folded 7mm in from each end to be placed properly under the plastic insert
in the CD jewel box, so after the first printing and unsuccessful folding
attempt, I placed fold marks in the proper place on the picture. Try to
remember, I didn't just fall off of a pineapple truck. That was a few years
ago.
Time to print the pictures. Hewlett Packard makes some glossy paper for
ink jet printing that is perfect for CD applications. Discounted it sells
for $51 for 50 sheets, so I try not to waste very many sheets. The CD back
picture would fit two to a sheet of paper, so I produced a 2 up version
of the back for printing purposes. Prepare to spend some time waiting for
the printer to crank out the photos. It took about 20 to 30 minutes per
page for the printing to take place. If you have the extra money, get a
nice Kodak or Techtronix dye sublimation printer for the job. They can process
the same picture in about two minutes. If you want someone else to print
it up for you, Kinko's has a dye-sub printer and Photoshop software, so
you can do everything at Kinko's, or just take your disk down there for
printing. I hope you have a removable Syquest drive for the Kinko's run,
though, the print files are about 20 megabytes each at 360 dots per inch.
The last thing to do before the CDs went out the door was to write the name
of the artist on the actual CD so that you would know what it was when it
wasn't in the jewel box. What usually happens is that a label is typed and
placed on the back of the CD, or you just write on the back with a Sharpie.
Well, not me, president of the Gear Sluts. I went down to Kinko's and had
an overnight rubber stamp made that said BUCKY BAXTER with letters 1/2 inch
high and a text length of three inches. I then used a permanent ink stamp
pad and stamped BUCKY BAXTER on each of the CDs.
Pop out the plastic insert, bend the tabs and place the back photo, replace
the plastic insert, put in the CD (don't forget this part), fold and slip
in the booklet, and bingo, finished product out the door.
Not to be out done by Bucky's CD, my wife who is lead singer and songwriter
for a new band called Fugitive Blonde (we won't discuss the reasons for
the name choice) decided to go with her friend Joy to MIDEM. "Gee,
that looks easy, why don't you make some CDs of my songs to take along?",
she asked. "Sure," I said, thinking that doing it one more time
would still be fun.
The recordings for Fugitive Blonde had been compiled over quite a few years
on many different machines. They included Akai MG-1212 analog 12 track,
ADAM 12 track digital, Fostex G-24S, and Alesis ADAT. The mixers used ranged
from a Roland 24 input keyboard mixer, to an SSL-4000E (well, so I took
the ADAM to the studio one day as a test, OK?). The mixing environments
ranged from studio control room to untreated spare bedroom. Most of the
material was on DAT tapes, except for a couple that were on Sony F-1 with
emphasis (OK, so I made a mistake once).
I was originally content with the idea of just copying the songs to CD for
the purpose of obtaining interest at a record company so that there would
be a budget to recut the material. I started by digitally transferring everything
to one DAT tape for ease of handling. I decided to try running one of the
songs through the TC Electronics M5000 digital audio processor to play with
the new three band digital limiting software that is available for that
box. I started messing around with the compression parameters and the crossover
frequencies between bands, and all of a sudden it sounded like a finished,
mastered record, but with a little hum and hiss. It sounded so much better,
that I ran every tune through the compressor. I didn't always use compression,
most of the time I would just raise the level of the upper band to make
the mix sound a little brighter and compress the low end to add some meat
to the bass and kick drums. Cool! I started getting excited.
I then transferred the results into Sound Tools on the Mac. Once in Sound
Tools, I loaded in each song and listened to the beginning. About half of
them contained some hum, or hiss, or both. I happened to have DINR in my
Sound Tools, so I let it analyze the hiss before the downbeat of the song
at set it's filters as it saw fit. I usually chose about 10db of noise reduction
and then processed the file. IF there was any hum, I also ran it through
the hum removal section of DINR. It worked great. Finally I trimmed the
noisy space off of the beginning of each tune. Ready to start cranking out
CDs.
With all of the tunes in Sound Tools format on the Mac hard disk, I used
Masterlist CD to sequence the songs for transfer to the CD. I simply opened
each audio file in the order I wanted them played, and selected the space
I wanted between songs. The start and end times of each tune are displayed
automatically, and a running timer lets you know where you are so you can
punch the START ID button on the CD recorder. Digidesign says that there
are hardware limitations that will not let Masterlist CD automatically write
START IDs to an external CD recorder. Another brownie point for SADiE.
Like the Lone Ranger arriving just in time to save the day, the new RCD-1000
CD recorder arrived on my doorstep. It is a little half height unit that
looks like an external CD-ROM player, except it records! I wouldn't have
to stand around and manually record START IDs any more.
It took less than 10 minutes to hook up the new box, load the software,
and re-boot the computer. The audio data was already on the hard disk...
(Wait just a darn second, here. A computer hard disk is spelled with a "K",
but an audio disc is spelled with a "C". Now that I have digital
audio on my hard disk (disc) so how am I supposed to spell it? How about
disck?) Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I loaded the disc writing software
and placed a blank disc in the RCD-1000. They have a cool drag and drop
interface that lets you set up the CD-R recording session. You just select
Audio as the format for the CD, and drag the names of the songs over to
the audio portion of the display. Choose CREATE from the menu and get ready
to write.
As a safety factor when writing to CD, the software gives you the option
of actually writing the data to disc, or writing to a Virtual Disc. If you
choose Virtual Disc, the software pretends to be recording to disc, but
actually keeps the writing laser turned off. This allows you to make sure
that all of your data can be spooled off the hard disk correctly without
blowing a CD blank in the process. The manual highly recommends that you
try this before actually writing the CD. I usually do it this way unless
I am trying to add to my ever growing pile of blown CDs.
One other point. I found out the hard way (after blowing a CD) that it doesn't
matter in which order you drag tune titles over to the audio window, the
tunes will be recorded to the CD in alphabetical order. After one CD down
the drain, I added numbers to the front of each file name to have them sort
in the right order.
Cool! (Second time I said that in the same article). Two big plusses about
the Pinnacle Micro RCD-1000. Because of the way it records the audio to
the disc, it places START IDs automatically and at the correct place just
before the audio file starts. No more manual START ID button pressing. And
I've been saving this for last, the RCD-1000 is a double speed drive. IF
you have a fast enough computer and hard disck (remember, it has audio on
it now) you can record CDs at double speed. This means that these CDs with
46 minutes of audio only took 23 minutes to record. The Fugitive Blonde
CDs only took five hours, and since I didn't have to push the manual START
ID button, I could work on the artwork at the same time.
OK, so things were starting to get a little testy after another 15 hours
of recording CDs. Not so, Photoshop breath. While my trusty Sound Tools/
Pinnacle Micro enhanced Mac was busy cranking out CDs, I fired up my trusty
Mac Powerbook to work on the Fugitive Blonde CD booklet.
Another trip to Kinko's produced some 300 dot per inch scans of black and
white head shots of the Fugitive herself. I loaded it into Photoshop, cropped
it, and added the text. I decided not to use a photo for the cover or back,
because my daughter, Ashlee had just drawn her impression of the Fugitive
Blonde on her Mac. She had produced two drawings, one for the cover, and
another for the back of the CD. Some image shuffling and text typing produced
the results you see here.
Well, in the span of a week, I was the record producer, the mastering engineer,
the CD plant, the record company president, and the entire art department.
It showed me that if you play with your high tech toys enough and learn
how they work, they can help you create things that give you just a little
edge on the next guy.
If you want to produce more than 10 or 20 CDs, then this method becomes
a little expensive. You won't make much money producing CDs at $20 each
and selling them at $14 each. But, that is how I live. Lose money on every
deal, but make it up in volume.
The CD you just made can be used as a master to send to the CD plant, and
your artwork can be used to mass produce the CD booklets. There are many
CD plants that will crank out 1000 CDs for about $1.80 each, including the
booklets. You're in business now!
By the way, the Fugitive Blonde demos sounded so good after all of the clean
up and mastering, that all of the record companies that saw the Fugitive
Blonde package and heard the CD thought that it was a finished product already
with a record company. One of them wanted to know how much it would cost
to get Fugitive Blonde out of her current contract. Well, let's see. A Power
Mac, a Kodak Dye Sublimation printer, Aldus Freehand, a color scanner, a
digital camera, Macromedia Director, some video hardware, morphing software...........
Usually I submit my stuff to EQ through Compuserve. Because of the Photoshop
pictures, the total amount of data was 70 megabytes. Overnighting a Syquest
was considered, but my Syquest is only 44 megabytes so it would have taken
two of them at about $50 each. So what did I do? I submited my article on
CD-ROM. I had plenty of room to spare, and it only cost me $10 for the blank
CD. I think I can chalk that up as another first for Gear Sluts. TTFN (Ta
Ta For Now)
Note: Roger Nichols has since purchased a copy of Adobe Photoshop 3.0 and
a copy of Adobe Illustrator 5.5 so that he doesn't have to worry about the
Copyright Police reading this article.