Let’s make a record!

Well, that’s the easy bit out of the way. Making even a single recording involves teams of people with a wide range of skills – read the sleeve notes on any CD and you may be surprised to see just how many individuals get a mention. You may also be amazed to discover that a song that plays for just a few minutes may have taken days in rehearsal and many attempts – or ‘takes’ - in the studio before everyone is happy with the recording. Compiling an album of individual performances can take weeks or – more typically – months! As much time again may be needed to turn the raw recordings into the finished CD.

Obviously we need musicians! We also need producers, studio engineers, designers, graphic artists, administrators, PR and marketing people and – perhaps most important of all – caterers!

The primary qualifications for everyone involved are boundless enthusiasm – and infinite patience!

But … when you hold that crystal clear jewel case in your hand, listening to the sounds coming from the shiny CD it holds - and know that you played a part in the creation of something that will now live on for ever, maybe, just maybe it will all seem worthwhile.

1 The artistic process

1.1 Deciding on the ‘concept’

The concept involves thinking about who will buy the record. What kind of music will appeal to them? Should the record consist of a single style or a compilation of styles? Will the music be new compositions or new performances of ‘old favourites’? How about a twist – eg, Bach played on an electronic synthesiser (no – that’s already been done) or the music of The Clash performed by madrigal singers?

Whatever the concept is, it must have one overriding attribute. It must appeal to a wide cross-section of people who will buy copies of it.

One sign of a successful concept is the ability to think of a name for the recording project that will enthuse all those taking part.

1.2 Determine the musical content

With the concept in place, the musical content can be decided. For a new group, this might be as simple as recording all their best songs. For an ensemble with the entire classical repertoire to choose from the decision should be made easier by reference to the concept.

1.3 Production and distribution format

On what media will the finished record be delivered? The decision influences both the costs of the project (some media are more expensive than others or are more or less suitable for low volume production) and potential sales (very few people have record decks at home these days though if the record is aimed at the club DJ …)

As the physical size and shape of each medium varies enormously, the cover and other graphics must be designed with the format of the packaging in mind.

Choices include:

CD – Compact Disc: Nearly everybody has a CD player at home, as a portable or in the car so this format is the most popular medium today.
Cassette: Second most popular format
Minidisc: Slowly increasing in popularity
MP3: Opens the exciting prospect of digital distribution of samples or the entire record via the Internet for playback via a PC or dedicated portable player.
Vinyl: The good old ‘LP’ has all but disappeared from the shops nowadays and production costs are very high so this is an unlikely format for our project.

1.4 Graphic design – the album cover and then some

The importance of the graphics used for a recording cannot be overstated. Think of any album that has achieved “classic” status and you will almost certainly be able to recall the album cover as easily as you can hear the music in your head.

People will see the album cover before they hear the music. They are likely to see advertising posters before they see the album cover.

The first and most important job of the graphics designer is to produce an image and design that actively encourages the potential purchaser to listen to (and hopefully buy!) the record. The chosen image(s) must represent the music (and/or the artists if they have an established presence).

The list of graphics required for a recording project can include :

a) The album cover and back

b) Sleeve notes and lyrics pages

c) For CD and cassette, the liner images

d) Advertising posters

e) Flyers (maybe cut-down posters) used to promote events such as performances, appearances, signings etc.

f) T-shirts and other merchandise

Items a) through c) are essential, of course, other items being required according to the scope of the project.

Of course, the images should at least be relevant to the musical content of the album. In practise, a tight design brief might be provided by the producer or artist’s management, requiring the graphics to be in keeping with the “image” of the group or theme of the album. Considerable artistic flexibility remains, however. Should images be produced from photographs, computer generated or original artwork? Which fonts are most appropriate for titles, notes, lyrics etc.? Should a “busy” or “simple” design be used?

Technical concerns include the range of different layouts required (if the album is to be manufactured on several different media) and the more basic readability of text against the chosen colours and shading.

The design process is likely to involve presentation of several different proposals to the musicians, record producer, marketing people and anyone else who wants to have a say. Diplomacy is, therefore, as important as the good communication and project management skills needed to make sure that graphics are delivered in the correct format in plenty of time ahead of the promotional or manufacturing activities where they are to be used.

2 The business process

2.1 The business plan

Making a record costs money. As it is by no means certain that anyone (other, perhaps, than the people involved in making it – who may all expect “free” copies in any case) will buy it, the people who are asked to provide the funding will want to know how their money will be spent and whether they are likely to see a profit – or even get their money back!

At its simplest the business plan for a recording project needs to answer these questions:

What do you intend to record?
How much will it cost?
How long will it take to get the record to market?
How many copies do you expect to sell and how much revenue (income from sales) do you expect to generate?

These questions naturally lead to many others and a good business plan should have answers to them all.

2.1.1 The Budget

No – you don’t need to be Chancellor of the Exchequer but you do need to add up in advance all the costs you expect to incur and determine how they will be paid.

Once the budget is agreed and funding obtained, some way must be found to monitor actual expenditure against the budget to avoid overspending. It’s a good idea to build in a small amount for contingency to accommodate unavoidable extra expense or price rises during a long project but don’t expect this to cover slack spending controls. And, don’t expect anyone you approach for funding to be impressed by a budget that has a 20% contingency element!

A very simple example recording budget is attached as Appendix A. The example project would be very small in commercial terms with expected sales of just 16,000 copies (a number 1 chart album needs to sell over ¼ million copies) but it should provide a starting point for your own budget. The assumptions used in this budget are shown on the parameters sheet accompanying it. Though the record industry largely works on “percentages” missing from this model (ie, the musicians, producer and record company plus all their agents, managers and “hangers-on” all take a percentage of the “profits” generated by the record) you will still gain a useful insight to the workings of the commercial record industry by changing the scale of both the recording project (more or fewer musicians, shorter or longer recording sessions, more or less time spent in mix-down and production) and sales (record price and sales volumes). Don’t forget that a truly commercial record will require far more effort (and money!) in promotion. The band may need to tour to promote the album incurring travel and other costs that can quickly spiral the costs upwards.

Back to the “real world” … Appendix B shows the same budget applied to a school project with very different assumptions … basically, everyone works for free, feeds themselves and the intention is to raise as much money for school funds as possible with minimal risk.

2.2 Obtaining the funding

It’s said that money makes the world go round. It certainly makes records go round (excuse the pun!) and money is going to be needed to make our record. We need money eg:

Paying the musicians, producers, admin staff and engineers. (Even if they aren’t getting paid, they might appreciate being fed during long recording sessions!)
Tapes, discs or other recording media and consumables used in the recording
Duplication – the companies that will produce the copies of the record need to be paid.
Marketing – even posting out press releases costs money. Posters and flyers need to be printed.

To fund all this you can raise funds, beg or borrow resources and materials (let’s avoid stealing!).

2.3 Legal stuff

Lawyers? In a recording studio? Certainly – or close by, at any rate.

A decision has to be made over who owns the recording and the music it contains. This isn’t the place for a lengthy essay on the laws of copyright and intellectual property but the following, at least, should be considered:

If the music being recorded is not an original composition of the performers then copyright in the music might still exist. In simple terms, copyright exists for a period of fifty years after the first publication of a piece of music. Publication could be printing the score and lyric, release of a record or live performance – only a lawyer can tell definitively. You should be pretty safe with the works of Bach but any modern music will involve some form of payment to the authors via the Performing Rights Society or the music publisher unless you can obtain a clear dispensation or permission to use the music without royalty.
The performance itself is an expression of an idea in the eyes of the law so copyright exists here too. The question is, who owns that copyright? With a recording involving performers, engineers and producers – all of whom may contribute to the final record – this may be the subject of some debate! The law has some simple ideas on the matter and if you are not careful you may find that the person who paid for the tape or disk used to make the recording owns the copyright! Copyright can be assigned at any time – even before the performance is given. Make sure that copyright is assigned to whoever is intended to own it at the outset.

2.4 Planning the project

OK – you have a concept for your recording, you’ve managed to sell the idea to a backer and have the funding to proceed. It’s time to start recording, right?

Think again. This is where the planning starts.

An example plan is attached as Appendix C which gives some idea of the complexities involved and the timing of each activity.

2.5 Organise, organise, organise!

Once the plan is in place it has to happen and that requires management. Simple, early activities include booking the recording venue and the performers. As the project progresses, however, more and more activities have to be started and coordinated.

Making sure that everyone turns up in the right place at the right time for recording or mixing sessions can be a job in its own right and (for big projects) might require distribution of individual calendars or notices so everybody knows what is expected of them.

The graphics and marketing teams have to be brought in at the right time with a crescendo of activity around the time that the record goes for duplication as the pre-launch marketing kicks in and the publicity machine goes into overdrive. All of these activities must be carefully coordinated around the chosen release date to make sure that the excitement you hope to generate is supported by availability of your product!

2.6 Making a profit!

The business plan should contain some idea of how you intend to profit from these endeavours. Assuming that the recording, graphics design and record production have all gone smoothly and you now have (or soon expect to have) a quantity of shiny new CDs in attractive packaging your energies must turn to selling them.

2.6.1 Marketing the record

Marketing activity should start some time before the record’s release date – and probably deserves a plan all of its own. People need to be made aware of the record in advance of its release and there are several ways this can be done:

Advertise – take space in newspapers or specialist music magazines or simply put up posters advertising the record
PR – the best publicity is free publicity! Try to get local newspaper editors interested in the project. Better yet, local radio and TV stations – maybe they will attend the recording session then come back to audition the finished article?
Appearances and events – consider a public performance of the record and sell copies at the end. Make the artist(s) available for interviews.

2.6.2 Selling the record

People cannot buy the record unless it is physically available to them. This means that some form of distribution has to be in place. Again, this has to be done well before the release date or you will have a pile of records sitting in a box going out of date.

Low volume distribution can be achieved in several ways:

Community selling – sell within the school or community from which the performers come
Mail order – allow people to buy by post
Local retailers – not just the record shop but garages, newsagents or anywhere that is willing to display a poster and stock a few copies of the CD on a “sale or return” basis – ie, they either sell them and as the money (less any commission you have agreed) to you or return the CDs after an agreed period of time has passed

3 The recording process

Recording even a live performance involves much more than having the performers sing and play into a few microphones and recording the resulting sounds. If you have ever tried recording your own performance and wondered why the result sounds nothing like the commercial CDs you buy, these notes might provide part of the answer.

More details are provided in the specific notes for Performers and Recording Engineers.

The recording process involves several stages:

Recording sessions – where the performances are committed to tape or other recording medium. Often each microphone (instrument or voice) is recorded to a separate track, hence engineers refer to the process as “tracking”
Mix-down – the individual tracks (instruments, voices) recorded earlier are now mixed together to produce a single recording of the entire performance containing a pleasing musical balance. During this stage, effects (such as reverb or compression, qv) and EQ may be applied to alter the recorded sounds – sometimes to correct or mask a deficiency (in say a classical recording) or radically change the sound as in many pop and rock recordings.
Mastering or post-production is the stage where the engineers must take the constraints of the intended distribution format into consideration. For example, CD has a much wider dynamic range and higher frequency range than cassette. The engineer must take these factors into consideration in producing the final “master tapes” sent to the pressing plant for duplication.

3.1 Recording sessions

The recording sessions involve the most people at any time in the project. All the performers (obviously!) and the recording engineers as well as the producer and his or her assistants will be present.

Before any recording can take place, the recording engineers must prepare the “studio” by placing microphones, laying cables etc.

When the performers arrive and instruments have been set up, the first thing asked of them is to provide a “level check” for the engineers. This involves playing or singing part of the song to be recorded which at some point must include the loudest part of the performance.

Depending on the nature of the recording a great deal of time might be taken up positioning and repositioning microphones while the performers are asked to sing or play repeatedly small parts of the song. The engineers are assessing the sound picked up by the microphones – often even minor changes in the position of a microphone can make a big difference to the finished result. This stage can be frustrating for the performers but is essential if the best result is to be obtained.

Eventually the engineers pronounce themselves happy (or everyone else pronounces themselves fed up!) and recording proper can begin.

3.2 Mix-down

At its simplest, each performer may be positioned across the stereo sound stage and a little EQ (tone control) applied to aid clarity and separate the individual sounds with a little artificial reverberation or echo added to make up for the otherwise dead sound of the recording studio. For many records a great deal of manipulation of the sound takes place at this stage – effects such as

compression to make individual sounds or the whole record sound louder
pitch-shifting (moving a voice or instrument up or down the musical scale – perhaps to correct a mistake or just for effect),
chorus (one voice becomes a choir!)
a whole range of electronic effects to alter the basic sound (eg, a “Dalek” voice)

3.3 Mastering

The mastering stage may add a little ‘polish’ to the final mix – perhaps a subtle change to the tonal balance or a little more reverb to fill it out. More importantly, constraints imposed by the intended distribution medium and listening environment must be considered.

CD imposes few technical constraints on the mastering process – the dynamic and frequency ranges of reproduction from CD are almost as good as those in the studio. Cassette or vinyl impose quite sever restrictions on both dynamic range (the difference between the quietest and loudest sound that can be recorded) and frequency range.

Even when mastering for CD it is usual, however, to compress the dynamic range as the typical domestic environment suffers from so much background noise that, say, the quiet parts of a full range orchestral or choral recording would not be heard unless something is done to raise their volume.

The end product of the mastering process is the Master Tape that is sent to the pressing plant and from which all copies of the record will be produced.

3.4 Duplication

At its simplest, duplication involves making as many copies of the master as you wish. The manufacturing process for CD, cassette, vinyl and other media vary enormously and the process can be quite involved.

If a commercial duplication house is used, the process can be viewed as a ‘black box’ – ie, master tape goes in … copies come out.

It’s worth remembering that the record comprises its graphics, sleeve notes and any other materials intended for distribution with copies. These too must be provided to the duplication plant along with the master tape.

4 Marketing & Sales

As already said, marketing should have started some way in advance of the record’s release date – and planning and preparation long before that.

4.1 Let the customers know …

Whatever methods have been decided upon to tell the world about the record must now be put into action.

4.2 Sales & distribution

It’s time for the sales force to get out there and sell records!

Even the best marketing falls flat if the product is not available for people to buy (distribution failure?) or customers aren’t given that final little push (or great big shove!) to hand over their money!

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Last modified: 31 July, 2002