Put your songs on CD!

We're often asked:

>Very interesting and informative home page (especially the tips on real
>audio). Could you please give us some hints on "what's the easiest/best
>way to make a CD?" (configuration, product brands, etc)?



    Sure. 1st you have to get your sounds on the computer. There are many ways to do this, but what I do is:

    I have no drummer, so you might consider a drum machine, and some inexpensive books with patterns you can use.  Now I add piano, pads, organ, brass etc. using my keyboard as well as where the sounds of the drums came from. Now I have a band! ;-)  One quick way of doing this is using Band in a Box software. I either do bass guitar out of my keyboard, or usually from my bass guitar into my recording software. There are a lot of options here, Cakewalk, powertracks and so on. I use Cakewalk Sonar which is very popular. On a budget, you might also consider Power Tracks. ($24.99) What I like is being able to record MIDI and audio files together. Now I sing, play guitar, leads and so on, beg people to sing back up and finish the song. I export the song as a wave file. Now I can edit it as a song. I can make real audio files from this as well using real audio which is free also. ;-) http://www.real.com/  Those I post on my site http://writingsongs/com/davebyers

Get yourself a CD recorder. Cost - maybe $150 - $400. Take your wave file songs and set up the order and shazaam, you're on CD!

For a more simple version, let's say it's just you and you're piano: Record and sing into your microphone/mixer into your sound card and record this using the cool edit I mentioned above. There's your wave file, now just use your CD recorder and you're on CD.

Get yourself some CD labels and inserts. I use Avery labels with a ink jet printer, cost me $1 per CD for the CD sticker, CD insert front and back. Print at 720 dots per inch and it looks great! Watch for rebates on CD's. I got some Maxell, and other for GREAT prices!

So how much did it cost me? Hard to figure. You have a good computer, wave files chew up ram and MB like crazy. $200 software to record, I had the keyboard and instruments, #30 graphic EQ, $100 drum tracks, $300 CD recorder, $.50 per blank CD and $1 per CD to label them all. Pretty cheap.

Click here to see some very nice drum machine programming books and books with many rhythm patterns you can use.

Click here for more information on using your computer to record music.

Dave Byers

Dave is the founder of "writingsongs.com and the Christian Songwriters Organization. He has been writing songs since 1979. His book "Songwriting fundamentals" is available by clicking here.