After all this time I am finally getting ready to put out my debut CD. For years I resisted this idea, as being too much of a vanity thing. Finally I realized that there was no point in working so hard, and spending so much time and money on this music if I didn’t at least have some bit of physical evidence for it. In addition, I am going to play live, and I figure if someone comes out to see me play (and they don’t run away in horror or something) I might just sell a copy or two that way.
I don’t have a hugely detailed plan yet, but as with everything else on the blog, I will figure it out as I go along. That being said, I do know that I will be releasing the CD on CDBaby.com, the local distributor that seems to actually be fair to the artist – what a concept! I might also hook up with Oebase for some more possible exposure.
There are so many details to attend to here, and part of this entry is so that I can start to get them straight in my head. In some sort of order:
1) I do have enough material finally, will be about 45 minutes or so. Its all written, but not all the vocal and instrument parts are recorded yet. Then I will have to do the very long and somewhat tedious task of mixing and mastering. Its all going to be done here at home, I can’t afford to go to a commercial studio.
2) To do this properly, I need to have a better computer than I have been using for the past umpteen years. To that end, I just purchased a new 64-bit Athlon with all extras from a company back east. Basically I am having them source the parts and put them together and bench test. I will do all the other work. Cost me just slightly more than just buying the parts, but I saved much time in having to do research on exactly what goes with what. With specialty audio stuff its worth it to me to have someone else do that stuff. I mean, I work with computers all day and have for the past ten years, reading spec sheets just doesn’t get me that thrilled.
3) I need to package the CD so it looks attractive. Yeah, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but you do. And if I am going to do all this hard work on the music, I don’t want to have the cover look like an after thought. I am not at all a visual artist, but as luck would have it I met one the other day, a guy named Joel Earl a friend of a friend. We got together over some beers and had a wide ranging discussion on art music and all that. Very pretentious I am sure to anyone listening, but how in hell do you talk about art without sounding pretentious? Unless you are Picasso or someone like that…… I must say, this is unlike any conversation I have ever had, I mean, how many times have I tried to hire and artist to do some work for me???? The thing is, before we got together for this little meeting I had Joel take a listen to my songs, and he liked them, which is important to me, since I want someone that is sympathetic to what I am trying to do. The design hasn’t been decided on yet, but boy did we talk about it!
4) One more consideration is what kind of CD case am I going to use. I am leaning toward Digipack, since they are much more environmentally friendly – and maybe cheaper too, I am not certain.
5) And of course, how many of these disks do I make to begin with? I am hoping that I will sell enough to break even. I think I did a rough sketch of this last year, and it was something like 150 or so depending on how I packaged it and all that. Obviously I will be thrilled to sell pretty much any that I can, since until I am out gigging, I don’t have much in the way of advertising for it.
That pretty much covers it for the moment. I have to wait a couple of weeks to get the new PC and then it will take a week or so to get it all configured. At last I will be able to use all the new software that I have acquired recently. As always, I will keep up here on the blog as much as possible.