So it’s been a while since I blogged about the debut album. The main news is the CD is now at the pressing plant. I had a local photographer come round to my cold conservatory and take some photos (Phil Richards Photography) – and then I went thru SimplyMarvellousMusic and Akcentmedia. Martin at SimplyMarvellousMusic handled the cover design (there are lots of options for packaging a CD!) and Akcentmedia (Sally & John) handle the whole QA process before submitting it to the production plant. I learnt loads about the process of production that I suspect traditionally musicians would be sheltered from by the technical folks at a record label.
So learnt that CDs are burnt typically following the DDP format. It’s basically a big file that containers all the songs (I suspect in a raw WAV format) but surrounding this are small metadata files – these including things like artist, song title and so on – the kind of things that are part and parcel of a format like MP3. To create the DDP files you first need to register with the PPL (https://www.ppluk.com/what-we-do/) which gets you a unique code (free to sign up, unique and lasts a lifetime) which is then added to every song you create and record. It’s from that royalties can be recovered. Mind you, I fully expect to have boxes of these CDs around the house for the next couple of years – so I don’t expect to buy my Hampshire pile next to George Harrison’s gaff anytime soon. Once I had the codes I met up with Dave and we outputted the DDP files. We used Reaper on this project, and it has the option to export DDP files, and there are loads of online tutorials on how to do that. If you working in a professional studio it’s something they will do for you.
I’m hoping to get the physical copy of the CD sometime in mid-April. I did think about doing the whole pre-order thing on Bandcamp – but the cautious person inside me felt unsure about selling something I didn’t have in my sticky paws – or had even played on a CD player. My plan when it arrives is to pop it in the car and go for a 40mins drive. Aside from getting ready in the morning, I seem to listen to music the most when I’m on the road.
Anyway, below are some proofs of the CD cover which will give you an idea of the look and feel.
