Tips on How to Produce Your Own Rock Album

If you're at the point where you're thinking about self-producing your record and you're serious about the music business, you should be at a stage where you've been writing down lyrics on notepads and your school binders for years, thinking philosophically about life and how to put it into words, and what others might think of your lyrics and how it might inspire them. Maybe you've already been playing in front of local crowds whether it's at the school auditorium or at local bars and clubs for a couple of bucks or free drinks. If you're at this point and you have a band together that is starting to gel, it is time to start thinking about self producing your own CD so your fans, as few as they may be, will have something tangible to remember you by and share with your friends.

In writing for an album, decide whether you want it to be original, or an album of covers where you have to pay royalties to the original artist. Being a cover band can be a good way to make a living by playing live before you develop your own style. Most artists, however, want to write their own material.

Before coming up with a budget, you need to come up with a realistic time-line. Be realistic and be flexible. Decide how many songs you can write a week. Usually, according to music industry experts, it takes longer than planned to write an album so you want to be generous with your time-line.

In the pre-production stage you want to create a calendar of how many songs you will record per day, your budget, and who is going to record with you (for example, will you need any studio musicians?). Make sure you plan this carefully, as you don't want to interrupt the production process to re-plan.

Decide what your goals are: just how serious are you? Will you be happy being a local band that plays a few clubs, or do you want to go nationally. This will factor in greatly in your budget when it comes to planning.

Once you've put together some songs and can play them flawlessly and cleanly, it's time to decide if you're ready for an EP, Demo, or full length LP. EPs's usually have 3-5 songs; Demos are usually just 1-3 songs and are used for promotional purposes. LP's are supposed to be your final product - a full length album of 6-15 songs. In the beginning, you can hand these out to your fans at your concerts if you're a small band playing at clubs.

The recording, mixing and mastering process can be expensive if you're using a studio and an engineer. Most cities and towns have studio space for rent and some of them can run as cheap as $25 an hour for an engineer and studio. Luckily, however, we are now in a full blown digital age. You don't need to spend anywhere near the amount of money a band used to have to spend to create your album. You can always completely forgo the studio route with a computer and affordable technology that any university would possess or that you could buy at http://www.indie-musicnetwork.com/recordmusic.html and create your entire CD in your living room.

With budgeting, know how much you can spend before you start. Check your available funds. Look at your family members first. If they feel you are serious and this is your passion, they may still want you to get a real job, but if you're going to do this no matter what they might decide they might as well lend you some money because they want to support you no matter what you do. You can also try and get a business or personal loan from a bank. There are also government grants for bands recording a record or writers writing a novel. Matthew Lesko's New York Times best seller on free money is a great source for this. It may take a lot of work, but if you keep applying for grants relentlessly you may get one eventually.

Pre-recording is a good idea to prepare for the studio. You can record your album on your own using 4-track equipment, computer software or a Triton keyboard to create all the background sounds to produce something similar to the final product. You can save yourself a lot of money and time hearing how it sounds in rough form before you go to studio so you can make adjustments in the preliminary stage, especially if you're going to be getting charged by the hour and you don't want to waste studio time.

One of the most vital parts of pre-recording is the arranging process. Have a meeting with your band members and make sure you've written out a plan of how you want to arrange your song in terms of which instruments will be involved in each individual tune and each part.

Once you've done all the preliminary stuff, recording is just a repetitive process and with technology it's not too complicated. Just make sure that the singer's sound is checked at the right level and that your singer has a proper feed of the instrumental sound so he/she can sing on key. If you're in a studio, the engineer will take care of all this. Recording in a studio with an engineer could be an entirely different article.

With promotion: start with radio both on and offline. If you're new, college radio is a great way to get your music out there. There are so many college radio stations in America. When I was a fledging writer and public relations intern, I found they were very easy to connect to and actually enjoyed publishing people's work and providing free advertising because they were looking for that experience to put on their resume. They will be more than happy to play your music, and they'll probably send someone from the school paper to write a review of your band and its music. Colleges also contain a huge crop of future loyal music fans. Since there are so many colleges in America, it may help to hire a public relations or promotions department if you can afford it. It's definitely a numbers game and they can save you a ton of work.

When it comes to distribution and packaging: there's the jewel case plastic with the hinge that's almost impossible to remove. There's also a booklet type that's more expensive but sturdier and provides more room for art.

When it comes to the costs of distribution, this is something record labels usually take care of. You can do this on your own with no cost. You can go to CreateSpace.com and they will distribute your CD for free on Amazon.com. Also CDBaby and of course Ebay are other good options. Have a link on your website and e-mail your friends about it and network like crazy on your Myspace and Facebook pages.

In the end, make sure you have fun. If you believe in it, and you can have fun doing it, chances are your audience will pick up on the vibe and you can sell some CDs.

Sources-

Musician Magazine January '99

http://www.indie-musicnetwork.com