Music Producer Software: Get your songs off those dusty shelves, with or without using it.

We arrived not so long ago in a digital age that is too often changing its way of recording and storing music files.  This seemingly plentiful digital world can, in fact, hinder (and not increase) your determination and level of creative output when recording and actually FINISHING your songs.  Some of you might not understand what I’m getting at yet, while others not only understand, but have been actively scratching their heads with a general feeling of being “stuck” and “confused” regarding “what to do next” with their finished/unfinished music for YEARS.

When musicians and songwriters don’t feel they are using the latest and greatest recording equipment, their self-esteem often suffers because they are placing “the cart AS the horse.”  The result of this is that you don’t “move” or “make progress.” From (questionably) primitive CD-Rom music data storage, to wavs, mp3’s, memory sticks, micro-sd cards and the like, the list goes on and “tweaks itself” accordingly in order to resonate with the most recent digital “trends” in music recording and storage.  Yet, many of us still have the technologically obsolete but BRILLIANTLY trustworthy Type II high bias or Type IV metal cassettes on the trusty old 4-track mixer, while suffering from the ILLUSION that this is “inferior” or “passe,” and therefore, your music must be “inferior” or “passe.” Nothing can be further from the truth.

When it comes to recording music in a home studio (or the closest thing you would call one), function should rule over form.  I said it in the Musician’s Companion book, and I’ll say it again: once the recording is finished, the average music listener will not know how you did the recording, or how much money you spent (hopefully none at all), so long as the recording is clear, nicely layered, and well done (with highest-quality, up front vocals if the song isn’t an instrumental).  This requires some mixing creativity on your own part (which I’m sure you have).

I love my Tascam 4-track.  I admit it.  It is so incredibly packed with mixing possibilities that it is seems “endless,” especially when doubling up tracks then ping-ponging to other single tracks.  But all of us have, at a time, messed up somehow during this process and used up all of our tracks with no more space to add any more musical instruments unless you let another one go.  There is a trick to fixing this, but it’s completely unconventional.  It not only solved my problems, but some work I partially completed on my mixer received media praise.

If this is the case with you, and you are without music producer software benefits, you might have a not-so-fully-finished music/vocal recording that still seems too much like a “skeleton version,” and not enough like a finished song.  The horrific result is that you abandon your musical piece entirely and become discouraged and/or avoidant.

Here is a quick recording tip even if you’ve already mixed down your recording to a CD or old cassette tape, allowed it to collect dust on your shelf for too long, but desire to bring this “forgotten about” musical masterpiece back to life.

1.) Take your CD or cassette player and run a line back into your 4-track mixer and record the entire song back onto a single track.  You can also record the entire song back onto two tracks and bounce it back (ping pong) onto another available single track in order to “double up” the sound.  You’ve just created 3 available tracks with the (present) song all on one track.

2.) Add some additional instruments and a vocal harmony.

3.) Burn a CD of the newly-polished, “completed” song you have just successfully brought back from the dead.

Do NOT give up on your songs.  They do not become “new” until they are released, regardless of how old they are to you.  Be creative and think outside the box when it comes time for resurrecting your well-deserved music.

© 2010 – Paul Spencer Alexander – All Rights Reserved.