4 - Song CD?

[LCK]

I'm thinking of producing a 4-song CD and would like to know what to expect in terms of time and money. If anyone has any advice, let me know.

 

It would be a pop-ish jazz album. Three of the songs on it -- "It's Always Summer in My Mind" (possible title of the CD), "Summer's Waltz," and "Things I Shouldn't Love But Do" -- were written here at Harmony Central. (The 4th song is "Nights of Spanish Guitars" which I may have posted here at some point.)

 

[mbfrancis]

Depends...since you're in NYC, best call might be to find a local jazz trio or quartet, book a studio for a day (maybe not in the city), and have them bust it out. The engineer can co-produce. You may want someone in the group to be musical director if you don't feel comfortable telling musicians what to do, or translating what's in your head. Also who's singing - this will determine keys. You may want to record vocals at a later time, and you will likely want to rehearse w/ the vocalist at some point. At the end of the day you'd have a professionally played and recorded EP. ~$5k maybe, depends on the musicians and where you record. As an option, you could find a studio *first* that has a big jazz network and ask them to help produce/coordinate.

 

I of course would be happy to track some piano for you, but my jazz chops are limited. You could do everything remotely and find people for ~$100-150 per *part* (assumes a 4-5 song batch rate), but then you'd have to know exactly what you wanted, and arrange in pieces on the fly...hard to do with instruments (easy with drums).

 

Hope this helps.

[LCK]

Very helpful!

[MrHarryReems]

I released a 4 song EP last year. Cost broke down as follows:

 

Studio bass player @ 100/song: $400

Studio drummer @ 100/song: $400

*Studio time (Lava Tracks) $400

**Mixing $500

Mastering (Mayfield Mastering) $450

Duplication: $446.85

 

Total: $2596.85

 

*We did all of our tracking in one day. We were ready to go, knew our parts and powered through it. Lava Tracks discounted our session. I don't know why, but it was much appreciated.

 

**The mixing was done at a favor/buddy rate, so YMMV here.

 

We tend to play a lot of genre festivals, and these sell easily at $10 each. In fact, we just had to re-order.

 

Hope this helps!

[LCK]

Thanks, Harry. That's very helpful!

[Delmont]

Does anyone recommend Disc Makers?

[MrHarryReems]

Does anyone recommend Disc Makers?

 

 

Disc Makers is CDBaby. I'm pretty satisfied with them for duplication, however, I prefer other mastering services. They also happen to be my client at my day job, and they are a pretty great company to work with on that side, too.

[Delmont]

 

 

Disc Makers is CDBaby. I'm pretty satisfied with them for duplication, however, I prefer other mastering services. They also happen to be my client at my day job, and they are a pretty great company to work with on that side, too.

 

Yep. Mastering isn't necessarily improving. I've also heard of it denaturing once-lively recordings.

[MrHarryReems]

 

Yep. Mastering isn't necessarily improving. I've also heard of it denaturing once-lively recordings.

 

 

I'm all for mastering, I prefer to use a higher end studio for that sort of thing.

[Delmont]

 

 

I'm all for mastering, I prefer to use a higher end studio for that sort of thing.

 

Naturally! But it's not necessarily necessary. Gateway Mastering (Herb Ludwig) is the fancy-shmancy joint here, and there's a story of Nirvana recording an album there. They listened to the raw tracks and liked 'em. Herb said, okay, now I'll do the mastering. They said, no, we like the way it sounds now.

 

They ended up never having any mastering done on it, and it came out (I'm told - I have yet to hear a Nirvana album) great.

 

I have some tracks I'm thinking of producing as a vanity (read: unlistenable) CD, and the best pro advice I've gotten is: don't bother with mastering, just get it the way I like it. That's why I was asking about Disc Makers.