Making practice CDs for a gospel choir

When you make a recording of someone else's song, you have just become a cover artist. It's important to know the legalities that are involved with this. It would seem reasonable that if you're not making any money off of your practice recordings, then you wouldn't have to worry about paying royalties to the songwriters. But that's not the case. In my researching, what I have found out is that you ALWAYS have to get a distribution license from the publisher and pay royalties, EVEN IF YOU'RE GIVING THE RECORDINGS AWAY FOR FREE.

Sources of this information: Harry Fox Agency; Boutell.com.

So what does this mean for a choir director? It means that unless the song you're doing is in the public domain, you will need to obtain a Mechanical License before you can distribute copies of your recording. The easiest way to do this is through the Harry Fox Agency. If the song is in the Harry Fox database, they will contact the publisher for you and get you the license. You will have to pay a small amount of royalty money (a couple of dollars) up front along with a $15 processing fee from the Harry Fox Agency. If you want to avoid the processing fee, you'll have to locate the publisher yourself and deal directly with them.

So making a practice recording of a copyrighted song will cost you about $20. Not a huge amount of money and you might be able to get your Music Department to reimburse you.

Once you have paid these fees, if you want to charge the choir members some small amount for the CDs, you can legally do so.

If the song is in the public domain, then you don't have to deal with any of this. Public domain music can be used freely without notifying anyone.

To make practice CDs, you will need the following:

• A computer. I'm only familiar with PCs, but Macs are very popular in the music industry, so anything I can do on my PC, I'm sure Mac users can do as well.


• A microphone to connect to your computer. The pink jack on your PC is the one that is usually used for microphones.


• If you're going to have instruments on your practice CD, you can use EITHER:
  
  
  
  1. Your real musical instrument(s) OR
  
  
  2. A MIDI keyboard OR
  
  
  3. Music notation software (I use Finale).


• Recording software. I use the Sonar Home Studio program from Cakewalk. There are many other products available as well, including some free ones. Here's a list on Wikipedia.


• CD burning software. I usually use iTunes. Sometimes I'll use Windows Media Player, but it occasionally has problems recognizing my sound files.


• Blank CDs.


• A thorough knowledge of the music you're going to record. Whatever you put on that CD, your choir members will be listening to it over and over until it's ingrained. Study your music until you're confident that you can put it down just the way you want it.


• If you don't play an instrument yourself, and you want an instrument track on the CD, you'll need to have your musician prepared to play the music for you. In my opinion, it's not necessary for the instrument track to be perfect, but it has to be good enough that the singers can get a feel for their parts in relation to the chord structure and rhythm of the song. Of course, if you plan to use the CD for musicians to practice to as well, you'll be setting a higher standard for how good the instrument track needs to be.

As I said in Step 1, there are three ways that you (or your musician) can put instrument tracks on your CD:

1. You can use a MIDI keyboard and record the music as a MIDI track.


2. You can play your regular instruments into the microphone and record the music as an audio track.


3. If you read music, you can use music notation software (like Finale) to produce an instrumental track.

I'll describe each of these methods in depth in the modules below.

This involves hooking up the MIDI controller to your computer, opening your recording software, and recording yourself playing the song on the MIDI controller. The result will be stored as a MIDI file.

The advantage of doing it as a MIDI file is that you can edit what you've recorded. If you play a wrong note, you can change the note. You can also change the key of everything you played or change the speed of it (my brother, who is a guitar player rather than a keyboard player, uses a MIDI controller so that he can play the keyboard at half speed, which is the best he can do, and then convert it to the real speed he wants afterward).

I haven't done any MIDI recording yet, because I haven't figured out yet how to do it in Cakewalk. The settings the MIDI controller required were different from the settings that I needed for doing the vocals, so I couldn't put MIDI and audio together in one project. I'm going to be getting together soon with a friend of the family who is a recording expert. As soon as I get it figured out, I'll update this section! Promise!

The other two methods described below (using regular instruments and using notation software) I have used successfully, so I can tell you exactly how it's done.

1. Select an audio track. You'll see a few track on the screen with names like "Audio 1" and "Audio 2". Click on the track name and type in whatever name you want to give it ("Keyboard", "Guitar", or whatever).
   
   
   The part that's circled in red is the track name. Click on it to type in the name you want for the track.
   


2. Set the track for recording (they call it "arming" the track). Just click on the "Arm for recording button on the track and it will be ready for recording.
   
   
   The "Arm for recording" button
   
   


3. I strongly recommend that you use the metronome feature. It provides a click track that will keep you on the beat. The click track will end up on the recording as well, but I think that's a good thing. If you don't know yet what metronome speed you want for the song, you can try setting it to a certain speed and click the "record" button. You'll hear the click speed and you can decide whether you want it slower or faster than that (higher numbers are faster, lower numbers are slower). Fiddle with the speed until you get what you want.
   
   
   The metronome button. You can click it on or off.
   
   
   This is the metronome speed setting. Click on the display to type in the speed you want.


4. Plug in the microphone and position the instrument near the microphone.


5. Click the "Record" button. Let the metronome click you off 4 beats or 8 beats (whatever feels right) and start playing. If you're getting feedback, you may need to change the position of the microphone relative to your computer speakers.
   
   
   The "Record" button


6. Click the "Stop" button when you're through.
   
   
   The "Stop" button

This is a usable method if you read music.

Open your software and start a new score. In Finale Songwriter, the Setup Wizard guides you step-by-step to choose the instruments you want and the time signature and key. You'll probably want a keyboard of some kind, and perhaps a bass. I strongly recommend that you include a drum part to keep you on tempo when you do the vocals. I'm not a drummer, and my drum parts end up sounding pretty lame, but it's still helpful to have it there.

NOTE: The "organ" sound that Finale uses doesn't sound like a Hammond organ; it sounds like a pipe organ. I always use the "piano" setting instead.

When you finish with the setup, you'll be looking at a blank score:


A blank score. This one has two staves for piano and one staff for the drum set.

Start entering on the sheet music the notes you want the instruments to play. Here's how:

1. At the top of the screen you see the different values of notes and rests (whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, and thirty-second notes, and the same values for rests). Click on the note or rest you want.


2. If you want to put a sharp or flat on it (outside of what's already in the key signature), click on the sharp or flat.


3. If you want the note to be dotted, click on the dot.


4. If you want the note to be tied to the next note, click on the "tie" symbol.


5. NOW click your mouse on the line or space on the sheet music where you want your note to go.


6. If you click one note directly underneath another, it will keep them together and you'll make chords. All the notes in a chord have to have the same duration.

When you finsh, you'll have what looks like a real score:


A filled-in score. The different notes on the staff for the drum set each produce different percussion sounds.

Listen to the playback to make sure you've got it the way you want it. Set the metronome speed to get the right tempo on the playback. Whatever metronome setting you use, that is the tempo you'll end up with on your final audio track.


The Play button


The Metronome setting field. Click on it to type in the speed you want.

Save the file under whatever name you want, then do a "Save as audio file." This will produce a WAV file.

Now go back to your recording software (Cakewalk or whatever), start a new file, and use the "Import audio" option to import the WAV file you just made. It will become one track in your project.

1. Open the project file that contains your instrumental track for the song.


2. Using the Insert menu, insert some audio tracks for your vocals.
   
   • I always do multiple vocals for each part. God blessed me with a good ear for music, but a weak voice. Doing three soprano vocals smooths out a lot of the warbles and cracks that pop up in my singing. If you are a super-fabulous singer, you can probably get away with doing one voice per part. Otherwise, do at least two. The more pleasant your CD is to the ear, the more often your choir members will listen to it.


3. Hook up the microphone to your computer.


4. Make sure the microphone is turned on! Yes, I have done it. I have sometimes sung an entire part and found out at the end that none of it was recorded because I hadn't turned on the mike.


5. Use the "Arm for recording" button to set your chosen track to record.


6. Use the "Mute" button to turn off any tracks that you don't want to be heard on this part. For example, if you've already recorded the soprano tracks and you're going to record alto parts now, mute out the soprano tracks. The only tracks you want to hear are your instruments and the one vocal part you're recording right now.
   
   The Mute button. Each track has its own individual Mute button, click Mute for each track that you want to silence.


7. Click the "Record" button and start singing!
   
   • Focus on getting your notes right! Your choir members are going to be listening to this over and over, so whatever you sing is going to get ingrained in their brains. Getting all the notes right is more important than sounding beautiful or expressive. You can work on the expressiveness during rehearsal.
   
   
   • Try to hit your consonants clearly but gently. If you're too forceful, you'll end up with harsh, explosive sounds on your consonants. Also don't hold the microphone too close to your mouth.
   
   
8. When you finish singing, click the "Stop" button.


9. Click the "Arm for recording" button again to un-set the track from recording mode.


10. Select the track that you want to record on next, return to step 5 and repeat until you have all your tracks done.


11. When you've finished them all, you're ready to start saving files.

The beautiful thing about recording software is that you don't have do an entire track over every time you make a mistake. Here's how to correct stuff (for this example, I'll imagine that I have a mistake in soprano track #2):

1. Notice the little green triangle at that is above the recorded tracks. This is the indicator that shows where you are in the track (beginning, middle, or end). The numbers that follow it are like measure numbers.
   
   
   The green flag.


2. Click "Play" and listen to the track. You might need to mute the other tracks to get a good listen. Watch the green flag move across the track during the playback and notice exactly where the error occurs. For this example, I've listened and decided that the problem is in measures 7 through 10.


3. Click on the body of the track you want to correct. This will highlight it.
   
   
   The "Soprano 2" track is highlighted.


4. Click on the measure number where the beginning of the problem is. The green flag will move to that number.
   
   
   The flag has been moved to measure #7.


5. Go to the Edit menu and choose "Select: From=Now"


6. Now click on the measure number where the end of the mistake is.


7. Go to the Edit menu and choose "Select: Thru=Now". Now you will have the problem area highlighted.
   
   
   Measures 7-10 on the "Soprano 2" track are now selected.


8. Go to the Edit menu and choose "Delete". What you want to delete is "Events in tracks".
   
   • DON'T click the box that says "Delete hole".
   
   The problem area has now been deleted.
   
   
   Measures 7-10 on the "Soprano 2" track are gone now.


9. Click on a measure number that is a little bit before the part you've deleted.


10. Make sure the track is armed to record, click the "Record" button, and sing the part again.

The new part you just recorded will be counted by the software as a separate entity from the rest of the track. From then on, if you just click on the early part of the track to select it, it will not select everything. It won't select the correction. This is why you have to make sure you use "Select All" from the Edit menu when you're saving the audio files. That's the only way to get everything.

First save your entire project.

Now it's time to save the parts as audio files. You'll want to have one audio file that has all of the parts together, and then separate audio files that feature each individual part.

For the "all parts" file, use the "Select all" option, then go to the File menu and use "Export audio". Choose WAV as your file format, choose a file location name and there you go.

You have two options for how to do the audio files for the individual parts. Using the tenor part as an example, you can either produce an audio file that has nothing but the instruments and the tenor tracks, or you can have the soprano and alto tracks present at a very, very low volume. Here's how to do each one:

• To do a bare tenor part, use the "Select all" option, then use the "Mute" button to silence all the soprano and alto tracks. Go to "Export audio", choose WAV as your file format, select an appropriate file name (one that has the word "tenor" in it somewhere), and it's done.


• To do a tenor part with the sopranos and altos faintly in the background:
  
  1. Use the "Select all" option.
  
  
  2. Go to the Console View screen.
     
     
     This is the button that will take you to the Console View screen.
     
     
     This is what the Console View screen looks like when you get there. You can see the track names at the bottom of each track.
     
  
  
  3. Adjust the volume levers on each track until you get the sound the way you want it. You would want the soprano and alto voices to be slightly audible, but the tenor tracks to be obviously prominent and easy to follow. Use the "Play" button to hear what you've got and fiddle with the volumes until it's just right.
     
     
     The Play button. It's in the same place regardless of whether you're in Track View or Console View.
  
  
  4. When you've got the volume settings you want, go to "Export Audio". Choose WAV as your file format, select an appropriate file name (one that has the word "tenor" in it somewhere), and it's done.

Do this for each individual part. When it's done you're ready to burn your CDs.

In your CD-burning software:

1. Add the WAV files you just made to your music library. Go to the "Add files to library" option and choose your files.


2. Make a new playlist and add your WAV files to the playlist.
   
   • If you're only doing one song, it's easier to put all of the individual parts on the same CD. The choir members can just skip to the track that's relevant to them.
   
   
   • If you did a lot of songs, you should make a soprano playlist, an alto playlist, and a tenor playlist. Each playlist should include the versions of the songs with all the parts together (so that they can hear what the song sounds like in its totality) and the versions of the songs with just their individual part. The way I do it is like so (for the alto part, for example):
     
     
     1. First song, all parts
     
     
     2. First song, alto part
     
     
     3. Second song, all parts
     
     
     4. Second song, alto part, etc.
   
   
3. Get your blank CDs and start burning the CDs using those playlists.


4. Label each CD as soon as it's finished so that you know which ones are which.


5. Package them up and you're ready to distribute them!

GOOD WORK!