Rewards Often Outweigh Risks in Producing a CD

It’s hard to spit in Los Angeles and not hit someone with a demo tape. But laying your dream on the line and putting out a CD of your music is a courageous endeavor that involves commitment, planning and, of course, money. There are 20 million songs in this city of dreams, and these are just five of the groups who have produced their own CDs.

Costs listed for these projects are based on initial orders of 1,000 CDs.

ALBUM: “Lure”

ARTIST: I Found God

PRODUCER: Michael Ciravolo

COSTS:

$200 recording

$500 mastering

$500 graphics

$1,800 pressing (included printing covers)

$500 miscellaneous

$3,500 total

PROCESS:

Stress was stressed.

Stress (“. . . as in ‘I can’t take it anymore,’ ” he explained) is the lead guitarist and leader of the band, I Found God, whose music he describes as “Black Sabbath meets Janis Joplin.”

“When I first got the 1,000 CDs, [I thought] they’re gonna bury me with these,” Stress said. “It was quite overwhelming; I had no concept of how I was going to get rid of them.”

Of all the projects analyzed for this article, “Lure” was the least expensive to produce because the band was able to rely on friends for help with photography, graphics and most importantly, recording.

“We recorded basically the whole album in a garage in the Valley,” Stress said. “My friend has state-of-the-art equipment, but it’s in his garage.”

The band’s 14 songs were recorded on two Alessis eight-track ADAT machines electronically linked, giving the band 16 digital tracks to work with. The album cover artwork was done by another friend and the photography costs were about $100.

RESULTS:

“It was the smartest thing we ever did,” Stress said. “We’re really close to the end of our 1,000. We’ve got about 150 left but we’ve gone beyond breaking even.”

Stress said the group’s lucky break was getting picked up by a European distribution company, Cargo Records in London. The sales of “Lure” in England, Germany and Italy were enough to cover most of the band’s album-related costs.

“They bought our CDs at wholesale,” he said. “They would pay $7.50 apiece for them, which is more than you’ll ever get on a major record label, ‘cause we own the label.”

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ALBUM: “Anything That Means Everything”

ARTIST: Camille’s Blues Box

PRODUCER: Camille Porske and Joseph Simon

COSTS:

$1,777 24-track professional recording studio

$430 studio musicians

$880 mastering

$75 graphic design

$1,677 pressing (including cover printing costs)

$4,839 total

PROCESS:

Like many first-timers, Camille Porske’s first venture as a record producer was a learn-as-you-go experience. The Glendale resident contracted production services separately, causing her to spend more money in the process.

“You know, it’s like when you go to Lucky and then you go to Hughes and you go, ‘Well, I can buy my tomatoes here and I’ll go to the other place and get my lettuce. I’ll make a salad and I know it will taste good, but I don’t have that much time to sit and compare that many prices cause I’m really hungry.’ ”

Porske, who is from New York, has been performing with her band in clubs around Los Angeles for the past few years--most notably the Kibbitz Room at Cantor’s in Hollywood--refining her blues-rock style.

When it came time to record the album, she said, the extensive club work paid off: The band was tight. The entire nine-song album was recorded in less than 10 hours in a professional 24-track analog recording studio.

To save money, Porske decided not to print full-color CD covers, but instead used black-and-white photos with a sepia tone wash. She also did most of the design work herself, working late into the night at her neighborhood Kinkos.

RESULTS:

“It’s been doing well, I’ve put it in several stores: Tower on Sunset, Rhino and Wherehouse and a Moby Disc,” she said. “And it’s selling there. We’ve gone through about three boxes (300 CDs).”

In fact, Porske said making the CD was one of the best things she’s done to advance her singing career.

“It’s amazing, the difference in the respect, when you call up and you represent yourself as from Real Soul Records [her label], as opposed to ‘Hi, I’m the neighborhood band,’ ” she said.

“If you hustle, you’ll find a lot of things out there. I’m considering doing a promotional CD, for about $1.12 a piece, and sending them out to radio stations.”

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ALBUM: “Si Se Puede” (“You Can Make It”)

ARTIST: Tapestree

PRODUCER: Jerry Manfredi and Cesar M. Garcia

COSTS:

$9,000 24-track recording studio

$3,000 tape stock, guest artists, miscellaneous expenses.

$0 graphic design, printing and cover art work

$2,000 mastering and pressing CDs

$14,000 total

PROCESS:

For the band Tapestree, its first effort, “Si Se Puede,” was a labor of love.

The group, made up of L.A. music scene veterans, had worked as the house band at El Chaparral restaurant in Sylmar for several years.

“All five of us put in our tips for two years,” said Cesar Garcia, lead vocalist and sax player. “We sold band T-shirts and we put in $10 a week extra, each of us.”

They wanted “Si Se Puede” to be the best it could be, so they decided to invest most of the money in the recording process and not on other areas of the CD’s production.

They not only spent a big chunk of their money on professional, 24-track studio time, but also contracted some top L.A. session players to augment their sound, including percussionist Sal Rodriguez, guitarist Bruce Conte, keyboardists Bobby Espinoza and Tommy Mars.

They were able to save some money because friends and relatives did the graphic design, artwork and printing for the album for free. And the band got a package deal for mastering and pressing.

RESULTS:

“They’re more positive than negative,” Garcia said. “It’s gotten us more concert jobs, it’s impressive and they pay us more.

“But next time, I’m going to be more careful. We want to do it again, but we want to get some management.”

They’ve sold about 300 CDs and Garcia is trying to get the album into other sales outlets in Arizona and Texas, where the Latin music market is strong.

At the very least “we have a product,” he said.

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ALBUM: “The Angels of Venice”

ARTIST: The Angels of Venice

PRODUCER: Carol Tatum

COSTS:

$0 recording

$400 mastering

$1,500 graphic design

$1,700 pressing 1,000 CDs

$750 printing CD labels

$4,350 total

PROCESS:

Most of the selections on the first release of this instrumental trio of harp, cello and flute are original neoclassical pieces penned by harpist Carol Tatum. Tatum likes to think of it as, “the little CD that could.”

In 1994, Tatum, who had sustained some Northridge earthquake-related water damage to her living room couch, decided to forego buying new furniture and instead used the insurance money for her recording project.

But Tatum didn’t want to squander the couch money on studio time.

“We recorded at home in my ex-boyfriend’s living room in between traffic noises,” Tatum said. “In fact, you can hear some [car] horns.” They recorded on a Fostex eight-track deck, considered a semiprofessional machine.

“He was a very good engineer,” Tatum said of her ex-beau.

She decided to contract the different services separately. “It was important to me to have high quality artwork on the CD cover,” Tatum said. “I had specific ideas of what I wanted.”

Even though she chose Botticelli’s “The Three Graces,” a piece of art in the public domain, Tatum still ended up paying about $1,500 for the CD cover’s graphic design.

RESULTS:

“The CD was extremely successful for us,” Tatum said. “We got back our initial investment in about two months. We’ve been making money off that CD ever since.”

Although she declined to offer exact figures on what the recording has made, Tatum said it is many times over her initial investment. She has ordered multiple reissues of the release, she said, and it is being distributed internationally.

The group has just released a second CD, “Awake Inside a Dream.” Although this was also produced by the group, it was recorded in a professional, digital studio with a budget 15 times greater than the first CD. Last July 6, it received a “highly recommended” nod from Billboard magazine.

“It just keeps building and building,” said Tatum, sitting on her still water-damaged couch. “If you totally believe in what you’re doing, and you don’t have enough money, my word is, ‘Find it.’ ”

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ALBUM: “Seeing The Circle”

ARTIST: Michael Kline & the Gypsys

PRODUCER: Charlie Midnight

COST:

$18,000 recording and mastering

$4,000 production costs including pressing, photography, graphic design, printing.

$22,000 total

PROCESS:

Michael Kline & the Gypsys want a major-label recording contract. They feel their country-flavored rock sound has broad appeal and made their CD in the hopes of convincing others. They wanted to prove that their songs would be attractive to those all-important radio programmers, who are often the sentinels guarding the path to pop music fame and fortune.

Kline’s initial $22,000 budget would be considered below shoestring level by major label standards.

“The budget we’ve worked with the last two years would be the minimum spent by a major label,” Kline said. “They will sometimes spend $1 million on a priority act.”

“Seeing the Circle” was the product of a working partnership between Kline, his band, his creative partner Shannon Seymour and his producer Charlie Midnight. Having worked with recording heavyweights such as James Brown, the Doobie Brothers, and Joe Cocker, Midnight provided some valuable expertise.

One of the first decisions they faced was whether to record fewer songs but have the highest possible production values, or go with more songs and sacrifice some production quality. They made the decision to go with just six songs.

“You have to make sure that the program director hears your record as being the same quality as other records he’s hearing,” Kline said, or “ . . . they won’t listen to your songs.”

They went for a package deal with a company that oversaw all aspects of production. And Kline opted to have the album’s photos taken by famed rock photographer Henry Diltz.

RESULTS:

Music from “Seeing the Circle” has been played on 118 stations nationwide, including Alaska and Hawaii. Two songs from the album reached No. 1 on radio station KISZ in New Mexico.

In the two years since the CD was released, Kline and company have spent another $60,000 for additional copies of the CD, cassettes, CD singles of the two songs, travel costs to personal appearances, posters, T-shirts and other promotion material, as well as legal fees. They also hired an independent record promotion guy at $500 per week.

“We didn’t have this $80,000 up front to begin with,” said Kline. “It was a learn-as-you-go experience for us. But we’ve proven that this band will get played on the radio.”

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Simply Put:

Mastering

The process produces a final master copy from which all subsequent CDs and tapes are reproduced. Today, this is usually a digital process and includes song order plus final volume, treble, bass and mid-range settings.

Graphic Design

The layout of the album cover includes placement of photos, choice of lettering and other aesthetic visual decisions. A master CD cover is made and then all others covers are copied from it. Much of this work is done on computer.

Pressing

This is the actual manufacture of the plastic discs copied from the master. Cost usually includes the plastic CD cases as well.

Printing

This involves production of CD covers.