9 Simple Steps to Producing Your Own CD

There was a time in the not too distant past when producing your own CD meant raising some serious cash or taking on long term credit card debt or a second mortgage. You had to pay for studio time, engineers, producers, studio musicians, and duplicating your recording. Now, thanks to advances in technology and the improved bandwidth of high speed Internet, it is simple and inexpensive to record your own CD from home.

You technophobes do not need special geek skills to record your own CD. With the right computer and some software, all that is required is the ability to read and follow instructions. The greatest benefit is that you will remain in complete control, both artistically and financially. Since you can easily burn copies of your CDs, you can give them away to friends and acquaintances for shameless self-promotion and sell them at performances and of course on the Internet for a nice profit.

Before you get started on the how, the first question you need to ask yourself is why. It is important to have a clear vision of the project from a macro level because the project can be sometimes long and grueling. You do not want to lose sight of the big picture. Do not record your own CD just because everyone else is. You need a more powerful reason. Too many bands go through the process only to end up stashing boxes of CDs under the bed at their mother’s house right before breaking up.

There are many high quality recording devices available that can bring your sound to life and give your groove that professional studio quality sound. To gain some confidence with your home recording skills, try making recording some tracks for fun until you learn some proficiency and can confidently achieve the professional sound you want. It will not be long before you can produce music that will impress even the most hard core professional and diehard music buff.

You will need to do some research and discover the various toys that are available, but recording your own CD essentially boils down to 9 simple steps:

1. Plug your musical instruments (bass, electric guitar, drums, keyboard, microphone, etc) into your recording device.
2. To make sure you stay on beat, plug your live drums into your recording device or loop your drum track.
3. Select Track 1 and record the keyboard track.
4. Select Track 2 and record the bass guitar track.
5. Select Track 3 and record the Electric Guitar track (lather, rinse repeat with all instruments including vocals)
6. Transfer, or bounce, all your recorded tracks to one master track, or V-Track. This allows you to free up other tracks in order to record additional songs.
7. Master your music to smooth out the volume levels. (Tip: Make sure you rest your ears before you begin to finalize your home recording. If you don’t, it may make it difficult to hear smooth volume levels resulting on uneven levels.)
8. Save your music, burn it to a CD and finalize it so it can be played through other devices. (Tip: Always save your music! There is nothing worse than an unexpected power surge to delete a track that you put your heart into and nailed.)
9. Convert your CD to MP3 and Wav file formats so that you can offer your songs for people to download.

If you are ambitious and so inclined, you can also use your computer to create your artwork and your sleeve. Or, you may want to call in a professional graphic artist to give your professional sound a professionally packaged look.

Once you are ready to sell your music, the very first thing you must do is acquire a Universal Product Code (UPC). The UPC is a barcode that uniquely identifies your product. Setting up a barcode initially is a little pricey, but it is a critical step (plus you just saved thousands on the recording). There are many online resellers who have registered with the GS1 US Organization and will do it for a reasonable price.

Placing a barcode on your product enables you to register is with Nielsen SoundScan, the company that tracks music and video sales in the US and Canada. Record labels review SoundScan on a weekly basis not only to check on their own brands but also to troll for new talent.