 This won’t work unless you have prepared your music to the point that you can play as perfectly as you desire live  Live recording is difficult but captures the essence of the music better

 You will never get this done if you just think, “I’ll release it when I’m done.” You have to give yourself a deadline.  I would recommend working backwards from a show you know will be popular.

 For instance, if you know you’ll have a good 100 people or so at a show on X date, book yourself another live show three weeks before that for the recording session. Make it live so you have the pressure to perform well.  Then, take one week for mixing/mastering one two weeks for duplication to avoid the rush fee ($100).  Or you can book your recording show two weeks before the popular show, take a week to master, and then pay the extra $130 to have it duplicated quickly.

 = cheapest, but only from your CD:ROM drive on a PC (doesn’t work for mac), automated, 24 hour rush is included in price  = fast  = same as discmakers  Make as many copies as you think you can sell on the first date. Try 10% of audience. So if you have 500 people, make 50. If you have 100 ppl, make 10.  Make more copies once you sell enough to recoup cost

 will distribute your music to Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, etc. for free  We used in the past to distribute to iTunes, this requires a subscription fee of about $50 per yearhttp://tunecore.com  Most people use CD Baby which is a one time fee to get your music on iTunes, etc forever. Or will do this too.  You should definitely have a bandcamp account, no credit card necessary  You should also have soundcloud

 Ask around to see if anyone has a Zoom.  H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 = audio recorders  Q4 is an amazing recorder!

 Put one in front of the band as first priority  One on the drums (because they will sound distant)  One on the piano or any other acoustic instrument (because it will sound distant)  One on the bass (although if you use a more recent zoom, the bass frequencies will be present in the recording)  Example of zoom Q4 recording quality: 6u3 6u3

 Be careful of phasing  You will need good quality software that allows you to see up to the millisecond to match up the sound waves.  If the sound waves are even a millisecond off, it will have phasing issues

 Cakewalk Sonar  ProTools  Audacity (free)  Reaper (free)  Mixcraft ($60)  You will not be able to do this in Garageband, it doesn’t give you enough detail

 Add a small amount of compression to even out the loudness  Add a small amount of reverb to make it sound tighter (reverb forgives)  Adjust the levels of each song so that they flow in to each other in the order of the tracks on the CD  You may need to EQ each song as well

 Note: you need to know the track order before you master  Put all of your tracks in order in one file  Listen to the first track and get the levels, compression, EQ, and Reverb correct  Listen to the flow into the second track and adjust the levels of the second track to match the first track  Mix down the first track, then solo the second track, and apply the same effects, repeat  Burn a CD and listen in as many speakers as you can as a full album  Listen in the CAR

 F – Follow  O – One  C – Course  U – Until  S – Success  If you focus on the post production for a week, you can get it done in the 3 – 4 hours each night you have after school.  Plan this at a time where you don’t have anything going on at night for 4 – 5 days straight  Stay off of video games, tv, internet, and phone for a week

 Have someone take pictures during the show   Square  Upload that image to the duplication site