Excerpt from “Pitching Your Songs On CD” Music Row Magazine

When I was a young song-writer, (way too many years ago) the accepted format to use in pitching a demo was 1/4 inch, leadered, 7 1/2 IPS reel-to-reel tape. This format dominated the business for years. Once the quality of audio cassettes improved to a point where they rivaled that of reel-to-reel tape, cassettes quickly caught on with publishers. The little tape in a shell offered a more convenient medium to work with, although like reel-to-reel tape it still lacked the ability to easily find the beginning and endings of songs. The audio cassette has been the standard workhorse of both writer and publisher for almost two decades. With the advent of computers and digital recording, things are starting to change.

Two new methods have emerged in the last few years- Digital Audio Tape Recorders (DAT) and CD-ROMS. DAT recorders offer many improvements over standard audio cassettes. With a DAT deck, you have all the sound quality of a digital recording plus easy access to individual songs. Digital recordings don't have the problems associated with analog tape. Audio is recorded as a string of 1's and 0's.

There's no need for noise reduction because there's no extraneous noise. Sounds are sampled, converted to digits and then converted back to sounds again by the computer in the DAT deck. Unfortunately, DAT decks have two serious drawbacks. They are expensive, starting in the $500 price range, and many publishers don't have DAT decks in their office.

This leaves us with the CD-ROM. Why not pitch your demo on the same medium that it hopefully will end up on anyway- a CD? Just about everybody has a CD player these days, not just publishers and songwriters, but everybody.

Most songwriters have already discovered the advantages of using a computer. A few years ago I wrote an article for Music Row about using your computer as a home recording studio. Now, not only can you record your demo on your computer, you can also make your own CDs on it as well. And best of all, it's inexpensive.

The heart of the system is the CD burner. This is a CD drive that can both read and write CDs. Blank CDs can be purchased in boxes of ten for $6.00 (Sam's Wholesale). I've been buying blank Maxell CDs for $21 with a $20 rebate. With the rebate my cost is only a dime each! Even at $1.00 per CD, they are still about the same price as a good cassette. My CD burner cost $50 at Best Buy and is a rewriteable burner. This means that it can use special disks that can be erased and rewritten over and over again. If you already have the computer, you could be making your own CDs within minutes of installing the drive and software. All you'll need is a sound card (standard on most computers); CD-burner, blank CDs, and you're in business.

GETTING CONNECTED

Installing the CD-burner is easy. I purchased an IDE CD-burner. Almost all IBM-compatible computers have two IDE connectors built right onto the motherboard. Your hard drive and CD-ROM connect to one of these connectors. The other connector is where you'll plug in your CD-burner. There are only two connections to attach to the CD-burner: the power cable and the IDE drive cable. Be careful which way you connect the IDE cable. Pin one on the drive is located next to the power connection. The edge of the IDE cable with the red (sometimes blue) stripe on it means that it goes to pin one. If you accidentally reverse the connector, it won't hurt anything, but it won't work either.

After you install the drive, you'll need to install the software. My drive came with a CD and a floppy disk. The drivers for the CD-burner were on the floppy and should be installed first. Next, you'll need to install the operating software from the CD.

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