2.  This won’t work unless you have prepared your music to the point that you can play as perfectly as you desire live  Live recording is difficult but captures the essence of the music better

3.  You will never get this done if you just think, “I’ll release it when I’m done.” You have to give yourself a deadline.  I would recommend working backwards from a show you know will be popular.

4.  For instance, if you know you’ll have a good 100 people or so at a show on X date, book yourself another live show three weeks before that for the recording session. Make it live so you have the pressure to perform well.  Then, take one week for mixing/mastering one two weeks for duplication to avoid the rush fee ($100).  Or you can book your recording show two weeks before the popular show, take a week to master, and then pay the extra $130 to have it duplicated quickly.

5.  http://kunaki.com = cheapest, but only from your CD:ROM drive on a PC (doesn’t work for mac), automated, 24 hour rush is included in price http://kunaki.com  http://discmakers.com = fast http://discmakers.com  http://oasiscd.com = same as discmakers http://oasiscd.com  Make as many copies as you think you can sell on the first date. Try 10% of audience. So if you have 500 people, make 50. If you have 100 ppl, make 10.  Make more copies once you sell enough to recoup cost

6.  http://musickickup.com will distribute your music to Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, etc. for free http://musickickup.com  We used http://tunecore.com in the past to distribute to iTunes, this requires a subscription fee of about $50 per yearhttp://tunecore.com  Most people use CD Baby http://cdbaby.com which is a one time fee to get your music on iTunes, etc forever. Or http://discmakers.com will do this too.http://cdbaby.comhttp://discmakers.com  You should definitely have a bandcamp account, no credit card necessary http://bandcamp.comhttp://bandcamp.com  You should also have soundcloud http://soundcloud.com http://soundcloud.com

7.  Ask around to see if anyone has a Zoom.  H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 = audio recorders  Q4 is an amazing recorder!

8.  Put one in front of the band as first priority  One on the drums (because they will sound distant)  One on the piano or any other acoustic instrument (because it will sound distant)  One on the bass (although if you use a more recent zoom, the bass frequencies will be present in the recording)  Example of zoom Q4 recording quality: https://app.box.com/s/6m9kmvfcwu97820yy 6u3 https://app.box.com/s/6m9kmvfcwu97820yy 6u3

9.  Be careful of phasing  You will need good quality software that allows you to see up to the millisecond to match up the sound waves.  If the sound waves are even a millisecond off, it will have phasing issues

10.  Cakewalk Sonar  ProTools  Audacity (free)  Reaper (free)  Mixcraft ($60)  You will not be able to do this in Garageband, it doesn’t give you enough detail

11.  Add a small amount of compression to even out the loudness  Add a small amount of reverb to make it sound tighter (reverb forgives)  Adjust the levels of each song so that they flow in to each other in the order of the tracks on the CD  You may need to EQ each song as well

12.  Note: you need to know the track order before you master  Put all of your tracks in order in one file  Listen to the first track and get the levels, compression, EQ, and Reverb correct  Listen to the flow into the second track and adjust the levels of the second track to match the first track  Mix down the first track, then solo the second track, and apply the same effects, repeat  Burn a CD and listen in as many speakers as you can as a full album  Listen in the CAR

13.  F – Follow  O – One  C – Course  U – Until  S – Success  If you focus on the post production for a week, you can get it done in the 3 – 4 hours each night you have after school.  Plan this at a time where you don’t have anything going on at night for 4 – 5 days straight  Stay off of video games, tv, internet, and phone for a week

14.  Have someone take pictures during the show  http://picmonkey.com http://picmonkey.com  Square  Upload that image to the duplication site