General Music Chat

And have been rehearsing and practicing them,
and practicing them. Planning on recording a CD
and DVD next year. What should I do? Should I
copyright !st? Should I rehearse tunes with band?
Or take material to studio? I'm a firm believer in
practice, and then practice some more, and one
more time. I know some of you guys have made CDs
I'm just looking for good solid advice on the whole
process. Any help appreciated.

If you have the time to assemble some players and rehearse the tunes the result will be more authentic, however it can be done quicker if you just put the tunes together with a drummer. On session day just try to record the basic drum and rhythm parts for all the tunes, and then add the bass, vocals and additional guitar parts later. I don't advise trying to record all of the parts for a song the same night, usually you will get bogged down and finish only one or two songs, if you're lucky.

Lynard a lot of my demo/original songs were recorded with a drum machine and then I just went back and layered parts.

When my band records we try to get drums, guitar and bass down in one run thru, to get the live feel, then I come back a day or two later and lay on another rythym guitar and maybe some leads and little washs of noise to embellish parts.

When I do my own originals, I ussually do the vocals in 1-4 takes, then layer on chorus's or other voices. When I sing I love to push my voice to its limits, although they arent much, but I can ussually only get a couple of takes before my voice goes, and I know thats not proper singing, but I love the singers that belt it out and it sounds like thier voices are fixing to fry.

Im with Jimmy do it in stages, so your ears will get rested, if you do rythyms, get a tape or cd of that and spend a few days playing around with that to decide what you want as far as leads, one trick I like is on the chorus's to overdub 3-5 additional guitar lines sometimes doing the same riff, sometimes an octave up or down, to me it just fatttens it up.

Good Luck and enjpy the process.

And have been rehearsing and practicing them,
and practicing them. Planning on recording a CD
and DVD next year. What should I do? Should I
copyright !st? Should I rehearse tunes with band?
Or take material to studio? I'm a firm believer in
practice, and then practice some more, and one
more time. I know some of you guys have made CDs
I'm just looking for good solid advice on the whole
process. Any help appreciated.

Lynard,

Re Copyrights:

There are absolutely two things you might wanna make sure you are happy and firm with...
1) The Song's Lyrics
2) The Song's structure
Once you are satisfied with that , then cut a scratch track of it (With vocals) and copyright it (Use the track for submission).
Also, NEVER allow Creative Commons in that equation. In my opinion, Creative commons is a sh*t poor excuse for losers to legally grab your work, change it into a derivative and then claim the result as their own... f**k those assholes! Dont ever let anybody claim your work.

THEN record your work for real... (Keeping in mind that you stick with the original structure that you protected) . Now, Worse case scenario... You discover "Holy Crap...I need a whole new middle section in the song... Okay, Go ahead and change the song to your liking... and copyright the bitch again ... Yeah its an extra 35 bucks or whatever... but a salvation from headache down the road if you get challenged (And sued for infringement of your own work...and yes there are butt-fucked dip-shits out there that would stoop that low)

Once your CD/DVD is complete... Then you want to copyright that (as a collection of your work) and you may need to cite permission for using your individual songs. But this is by far better than any verbal assumptions.

RECORDING:
If you can find a studio that will give you a package deal...Consider that over an hourly deal.
Usually more cost effective and gives you a lot more margin for creativity.

I am currently with an engineer who offered a package deal. I think, essentially the guy knows all the sh*t that needs to be known for this project. (He's also a damn good musician) . Consequently We have 2/10 songs almost complete for mastering. I cannot stress enough, how grateful I feel toward this guy for his help and time...and for the deal he cut me.

I agree with Jimmy. In the old days (analog 2inch 24 track) we recorded that way out of necessity. Once you had the tape machine set up it was just more practical to do all the rythm tracks or at least a group of them at a time.

Lynard, I notice that you sound-proofed your garage... Did you do the whol garage like that?

Lynard a lot of my demo/original songs were recorded with a drum machine and then I just went back and layered parts.

When my band records we try to get drums, guitar and bass down in one run thru, to get the live feel, then I come back a day or two later and lay on another rythym guitar and maybe some leads and little washs of noise to embellish parts.

When I do my own originals, I ussually do the vocals in 1-4 takes, then layer on chorus's or other voices. When I sing I love to push my voice to its limits, although they arent much, but I can ussually only get a couple of takes before my voice goes, and I know thats not proper singing, but I love the singers that belt it out and it sounds like thier voices are fixing to fry.I tried the drum machine approach. Reading the instructions on them is frustrating to me and ind I get sick of a boom che, boom che, boom , boom boom boom, boom, boom che,. I need smeone to show me how. I have a drum kit, but any one who plays them doesn't know how. Help!

Im with Jimmy do it in stages, so your ears will get rested, if you do rythyms, get a tape or cd of that and spend a few days playing around with that to decide what you want as far as leads, one trick I like is on the chorus's to overdub 3-5 additional guitar lines sometimes doing the same riff, sometimes an octave up or down, to me it just fatttens it up.

Good Luck and enjpy the process.

I don't know what happened on that last post. Sorry JW

Thanks All, good advice I'm sure I'll need more

The copyright deal I kinda flip flop on, you know,
they wouldn't steal it if it wasn't good, and I got a
hundred more. I see the need I'm just not sure
where in the process?

There's several large pro studios near the house,
and the off season here is Jan and Feb, I'd like
to get a pro sound. Thenagain my son-in-laws
band got a pretty good sounding CD from the
studio at guitar center.

No soundproofing in the garage, those steel
panels are from a big stage show we build.

So how many songs can I copyright at one time?
10, 20, 30? Is the lyrics w/chord boxes above enough?
or lyrics and lead sheet? or standard notation?

If I lay down the basic tracks w/guitar drummer, and
scratch vocal, why even bring the songs to the band?
I just soon play all the other parts myself w/ some
vocal help, save myself all that band bs.

Bands I've been in haven't changed a whole lot, except
were a whole lot older. Jam/played Sunday everybody's
on pills and beer, except me I'm a health nut, I just don't
do the drug and alcohol thing anymore, I have my wine
at 5 pm, but that's not really drinking, I call it dinner.

Just a drummer?

Makes me wanna go out and find a drummer to record
with, and just have the old band to jam/play covers once
a week. The drummer I got is good and a old friend, but
I've fired him from at least 5 bands, for drinking and drugs,
I just can't fire him again, he seems excited at times. I don't
want to play in the bars, I haven't told this band yet, but
none of them have found a paying gig either.

I want to do something I've never done and make a record
of original music next year and drag my musicianship to a
high level. You know you can play 20 questions, but in the
early 80s when I was good, it was for one reason only,
practice everyday all day, I always had a guitar with me.

Lynard Dylan I thought it said kick a@S rock n roll, but a
little wordy.

I need all the help I can get.

Lynard... Its gonna take some time to wrap your mind around the copyright dos and don'ts...But it beats paying a cheesy lawyer

go here
http://www.copyright.gov/


When you get there, register with the eCO logon page.

Once you are registered, you'll have an account set up with your ID...From there on you'll have options about submitting a song as the artifact for your copyright.

Keep in mind, there are individual work submissions, and then collective (or serialized) works.
Now I could be wrong here...But Collective to me means something like a CD.

What I am doing with my music is submitting each song as an individual work... by that I mean I get a scratch track of the music and lyrics down into mp3 format and submit that song as the work. (Also I claim it as my production, music , lyrics,, pretty much everything.)


Later when it comes to a finished CD, you can claim the CD as a workand/or collection (I'm fuzzy on that rule). Note: The Cd would use your songs with permission, and if the songs have been altered or enhanced for the CD they become a "derivitive" work included in the package.

Now dont confuse royalties with copyrights...
Royalties come in many forms (SOmetimes hard to enforce) of payments for exploitation of your work. Ina CD its presumed (regardless of songs used by permission) that everybody gets their appropriate share of royalties from the sale and broadcasting of the work.

The Copyright protection simply reconciles any false claim as to who was/wasn't allowed to use the work for profit. So technically Your Copyrighted song cannot be used by anyone else without your permission.


CREATIVE COMMONS

A bullshit twist of copyright claims... Its designed to give partial rights (i.e mechanical) to John Q Public or Suzi Q Private Corp...or anybody who figures a way to exploit your work, profit and not necessary compensate you for it... My opinion on it: "f**k THAT"! Never give Creative common rights. If somebody needs your work, they need to be asking you permission and you need to be negotiating a payment from them, if they use it.

Lynard

I've found a drummer and started working up orginals with him. He is a little green so it's taking a bit longer than I wanted but we're getting it done. It does seem to me though, that having just a drummer is enough to get started.

I've got several CDs worth of tunes but so far we've worked up two. I want to get a show's worth (old habits die hard) then record it - I'll have to play bass and guitar for now which can be an issue if we played live!

TalboT