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Go Digital

By Paul Zollo

Online Record Stores

As previously detailed (SEE LINK TO DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION), there are many online record stores — such as CDBaby.com where you can sell your CDs via the Internet. And there are the digital download websites — such as iTunes or Rhapsody, where people can download your single songs and entire albums.

ITunes(SEE LINK) iTunes is Apple’s online music store which was created in 2001 to allow music lovers to download music — either single tracks or entire albums. A download of a single song is currently 99 cents; of this, the musician receives a little over two thirds, and the remainder goes to Apple. There are several ways for a musician to get your music onto iTunes — CDBaby (see link) will put your music on iTunes as part of their digital distribution deal, and many musicians consider getting on iTunes through CDBaby as the easiest and most effective way of doing it. You can also deal directly with iTunes by filling out this application form . This will give you all the information required.

Satellite Radio

By Paul Zollo

As opposed to the old-fashioned free FM and AM radio, now known as terrestrial radio, there are two basic satellites radio networks — Sirius and XM radio – each of which charges its listeners, and each of which provides thousands of hours of listening each week, and thousands of formats into which your music can be played. Unlike conventional radio stations, Satellite Radio is still relatively new and so is not closed to indie artists. Both Sirius and XM — which will most likely merge in the near future — offer hundreds of channels. For more information , go to www.xmradio.com and www.sirius.com

Recording Software

By Paul Zollo

Software – Pro Tools is the industry standard for the best method of digital recording. A combination, really, of software and hardware, it is manufactured by Digidesign, a division of Avid Technology, and a full spectrum of information about it and other products they manufacture can be found on their website at www.digidesign.com. Compatible both with Apple and with PC computers, it is, essentially, a digital audio workstation platform that integrates hardware and software. It’s used in every facet of recording music, from recording demos, CDs, post production, and TV and film scoring. It is made by Digidesign, a division of Avid Technology.

As one of the first programs to provide CD-quality (16 bit and 44.1 kHz) multitrack digital audio editing on a personal computer, Pro Tools grew quickly in the sound recording field, becoming popular because of its streamlined interface for non-linear, non-destructive editing. This appealed to analog producers switching to computer-based digital audio production. Much like Google or Photoshop, Pro Tools has become synonymous with digital recording and is the industry leader because it is the best. There are, however, other companies manufacturing digital recording software, and these include Apple’s popular Garage Band, and also Tracktion, Logic Express/Studio, n-Track, FL studio, Cubase, Ardour, Audacity, Jokosher, Traverso, Rosegarden, Otractor, Mixcraft, Sonar, REAPER and RiffWorks. All are viable systems. The only real way to determine which is best for you is to talk to other musicians and engineers, ask to see how they operate their system, listen to their productions, and weigh your options.

Digital Rights Management

By Paul Zollo

See performance royalties, which explains the concept of earning royalties on performance of your music. Any digital download of your song — say if someone downloads a song from iTunes

LP to CD Conversion

By Paul Zollo

It is cheaper to convert your LPs to a digital format than it is to replace all your old records with downloads and CDs. There are many kinds of reasonably priced converters on the market, and there are also many companies who will do the transfer for you at a fairly low price. There is hardware — a machine you can buy that will do the transfer. There is software — this you install into your computer, and hook up your old turntable to play the albums. For this your turntable — and the stylus — have to be in excellent condition. And, of course, the quality of your LPs will make a lot of difference — if they are scratched, that’s hard to escape, though some of the software does allow one to clean up the extra noise created by the LP, and also to lessen some of the hiss. (Although the great songwriter Chad Watson has written, in the song of the same title about his love of LPs, “I Miss The Hiss.”) Many people have varying opinions about the needs for conversion, and the best ways to do it.

Here is one such opinion, as expressed by music lover and audiophile Mitch Rissberg:

"I have been savagely collecting LP records for 40 years or more plus a bunch of 78s I got from my sister’s estate. I just recently dumped all my cassette equipment and went totally to CD and it was an interesting change for me. So for what it’s worth here are some of my thoughts. First of all, don’t let anybody scare you into thinking that your LPs will immediately deteriorate and have to be converted and want to sell you a bunch of stuff to do the job. That’s pure bull. If an LP is properly stored vertically and kept in reasonable temperature and humidity ranges and handled properly, it will outlast most of us (fingerprints don’t hurt—fingernails do). The same goes for the old 78s. What can damage a record is too much stylus pressure when played. I record my records at 1 gram. I have played some of them many times with no loss of fidelity. What really damages a record is some gorilla dragging a stylus over the surface or some guy playing frisbee with it. About the only reason I put my records on CD is so I can hear them in the car and anywhere else when I want to. Turntables are death around kids. [Blank] CDs cost about 33 cents and take 3 minutes to burn. So go figure. It’s a good way to go for sure.

I use .wav files for all CD recording. I can easily get 2 records on one CD and that works out just fine for me. Besides I have had way too much trouble with mp3 on all the CD players around this place. Of course my web music has to be mp3 because of size but that’s the only reason to use it there.
I go with a stereo 41000 sampling rate setting. Believe me it will pick up everything on that darn record.
I remove all lead-in and lead-out silence between recorded songs (it’s more like noise anyway). One easy way to do this is to record a complete record side then zoom in and put markers right at the end of one song and at the beginning of the next song. Most editing software can write data between markers as separate files. I then delete the worthless little silent files. It’s a lot easier to do this than to edit a great big old file.
An important thing about recording is to have good equipment because digital picks up everything— I mean everything: turntable rumble, crosstalk, and pre-amp noise in particular. So lose all the old 1972 equipment right now— it’s stone age (except perhaps for your turntable and cartridge. If you have a cheapo turntable, look for a good direct drive on ebay or somewhere. I had to get a pre-amp with 90 db s/n ratio. My 60 db one was not good enough. I shortened all my cables as much as I could, especially the one from the magnetic pickup to the preamp which is very sensitive. Be sure to ground the turntable wire shield to the preamp. It is also good to have a pre-amp with an external power supply. Keep it as far away as possible from those sensitive low voltage pickup wires. So all you need is your turntable and stylus, a good pre-amp and your computer— that’s it for hardware.
After I build up a folder of songs I burn it at least twice to CD, once as a music CD and once as a data CD. It is far faster to restore a data CD than to re-capture the music. It is also faster to burn an extra music CD or two than to copy a CD.
I use a separate hard disk formatted NTFS for all my audio and video work because I am constantly writing and deleting large files. In this way I keep my system drive fairly stable and I don’t have to de-frag it so much.
I usually monitor older records that have scratches. If it’s a good record I just let her rip. But if a record gets stuck I write down the recording time and remove the anti-skating (which applies a little back pressure to the arm to compensate for the inward torque of the rotation which describes an arc slightly above center). If this doesn’t work I try to nudge the stylus to see if I can get it past the bad spot. If that doesn’t work I re-queue the stylus several grooves over. I then go in after and try to fix the digital sound—or delete the song. One of these methods works.
For faster burning, keep your work disk and your burner on separate IDE channels. I noticed that it does make a difference, sometimes 30 percent.