Dance Music: A New Use For Your Computer!

As dancers, we have started finding ways to use our computers to enrich our dance experience. We put up web sites to promote ourselves. We keep our mailing lists in databases. We make flyers using our word processing programs. Now, there's a new way to use your computer that perhaps you haven't yet considered: working with your dance music!

With the computer hardware and software recommended in this article, you'll enable your computer to:

• Cut music to exactly the length you want with precision. No more gaps from trying to use your stereo system to make the cuts!
• Make CD masters of your favorite music, so you can easily mix and match them when making a tape for a performance. This is particularly great for troupe repertoires!
• Put all the songs you use in teaching on a single CD. Then, in class, you can easily jump around from one song to the next on your boombox that plays CD's without the hassle of rewinding tapes and watching counters.
• Use fading in and fading out for transitions.
• Transfer the music on your precious old out-of-print vinyl record albums and cassette tapes to CD. Don't put any more wear and tear on your irreplaceable collection!
• Eliminate hisses, pops, and cracks from the music on your favorite old record albums and cassette tapes, storing the data in digital form on CD.
• Extract brief clips from cassette tapes and CD that you sell, to put on your web site and give potential buyers a chance to hear what the songs sound like before they buy.
• Create spoken announcements, zaghareets, or other special effects sounds to include on your performance tapes that incorporate special effects such as reverb.
• Back up 640 megabytes of data from your hard drive onto a CD that costs only $1.50, as compared to expensive Zip removable drives. Throw away your old cartridge tapes that are expensive, slow, and unreliable.

Before I discovered this technology, I used to detest making tapes for performances. The lead at the beginning of the tape was either too long or too short. The gaps between songs were either too long or too short. Some songs came from original tapes that had been recorded very softly, while others came from original tapes that practically shouted at me, resulting in a performance tape that had inconsistent volume from one song to the next. I hated putting additional wear and tear on my precious old records, knowing that each time I used them to make a new tape I wore them out just a little more. Patching together troupe shows from a repertoire of songs that came from many different records and tapes was a tedious process. And then I discovered that my computer could solve all these problems for me!

The tools needed to accomplish all of this include:

• A recordable CD drive for your computer. This is a special CD drive that can not only read CD's, but also create them!
• A sound card. Most new computers come with one of these.
• Software to extract music from your stereo system through the sound card. Most sound cards come with such software.
• Software to write music to your CD drive. Most CD recorders come with this.
• Software to edit music or other recorded sounds.

There are a variety of CD writers in the market today. Here's what determines the price:

• Some read and write CD's slowly, others much faster. A device that records at 8x can generate a CD in 1/8 the time it would take to listen to that CD. So, an 8x recorder could produce a CD with an hour's worth of music in about 7 1/2 minutes.
• Some come bundled with software for creating music CD's, some don't. Of those that come bundled with software, some have very basic, low-end functionality, while others offer high-end, sophisticated software.
• Some use a SCSI interface into your computer, while others use IDE.
• Some can be used with the most popular CD-writing software, while others are not compatible.
• Some reside internal to your computer in one of the hard drive slots, while others are packaged as a box that can sit on top of your computer.
• Most work with both CD-R blank CD's and CD-RW blank CD's - make sure the one you're thinking of buying doesn't work with just one or the other.
• Some can read DVD's too and perhaps even write them, while others work only with CD's.

These factors all affect the price you'll pay--especially speed. Before you go shopping, decide which of these factors are important to you and which are not. This will help you remain calm when faced with the bewildering assortment of devices that are available.

If you have enough hard drive slots in your computer to hold them both, don't throw away your old CD-ROM or DVD drive. Most CD-ROM and DVD drives can read CD's much faster than CD writers can. So, when you're installing software that comes on CD, your CD-ROM or DVD drive will probably operate much faster than your new CD writer. Also, by keeping your old CD-ROM or DVD drive, you'll be able to copy directly from one CD to another. That would enable you to initially create a single CD that has all the music you use regularly on it, then easily write a new CD for a particular performance that has just the songs you want, in the order you want.

Blank CD's vary in price. There are basically two kinds: the CD-R, which you can write to only once, and the CD-RW, which is re-writable. Both have their benefits. Music CD's that you can play in a stereo system require CD-R's, so that's primarily what I use. The CD-RW type are useful for storing data files from your computer. CD-R's can be purchased in bulk packages of 50 or 100 for a much lower price than what you would pay for a package of 10 at a time. These bulk packages come without jewel cases, which I don't mind because I can purchase those separately.

If you have an old machine the processor (for example, a Pentium 133) may be painfully slow. If you're serious about music work, you may want to replace your old machine with a faster one.

You'll want to have a minimum of 32 megabytes of random access memory (RAM). More is better. I'd urge you to consider equipping your computer with 64 megabytes or more. I use 512 megabytes on my machine, and this added memory space makes an enormous difference in performance speed.

You'll need a sound card on your computer. Most new computers today come with one. If you have an old computer that doesn't have one, you'll definitely need it for working with music! If you plan to do DVD work too, you may also want a video capture card.

If you want to record any special sound effects or voice announcements, then of course you'll need a microphone. Plug it into the appropriate outlet on the back of your computer's sound card. It doesn't have to be one of the expensive "computer microphones" that some electronics stores sell--just a plain old mike such as you would purchase to use with your stereo system will work fine. Don't let the sales person talk you into paying extra for something you don't need!

Most importantly, you'll need plenty of available space on your hard disk! Music files occupy approximately 10 megabytes of hard disk space for each minute of sound that they contain. You'll need to ensure that you have at least 100 megabytes left unused for virtual memory, plus at least 640 megabytes of space, which is enough to fill a CD with music. To be absolutely certain of having enough hard disk space, it's a good idea to have a minimum of 1 gigabyte dedicated to holding your music files, but I found that really wasn't enough for me - my current computer has 300 gigabytes, which gives me plenty of room to keep all my music on my hard disk as well as keep the door open for video work which I hope to do in the future. Sometimes, you'll want to keep the sound file on your hard disk for several months, as you mix and match it with other music to be written to your CD's, and they accumulate quickly!

You'll need a way to copy music from your records, cassette tapes, and CD-ROM's into your computer. Your sound card probably came with such software, so you can either use that or purchase a separate product that has additional features. You'll also need a way to write songs from your computer out to your CD recorder.

One excellent product that addresses both needs is Easy CD and DVD Creator Platinum, made by a company called Roxio. Note that the word "platinum" is important here--a scaled-down version called just "Easy CD and DVD Creator" is included with some CD writers, and it doesn't have Spin Doctor. If the "clean" and "balance" options described below are important to you, then look for "Platinum" in the product name. Another product, named CD Architect, provides more control over the process of creating a CD and is particularly well suited to producing professional-quality transitions from one song to another.

Easy CD Creator Platinum comes with the following individual programs in the package:

• CD Copier Deluxe
• Soundstream, which includes Spin Doctor
• Easy CD & DVD Creator
• Picture CD Creator
• Sound Editor

Of these programs, the two that are key for making your own music CD's are Spin Doctor and Easy CD & DVD Creator.

Spin Doctor extracts music from your stereo system, from records, cassette tapes, and CD-ROM's, through the sound card on your computer and saves them as "wav" files on your computer. It can also extract individual tracks from a CD placed in the CD drive of your computer.

Now, most sound cards come with software that can extract sound from your stereo system, so why do you need Spin Doctor? Because it has a "clean" option which removes hisses, pops, and other "noise" from your aging records and tapes, so that the resulting file on your computer may sound even better than the original played on your turntable or cassette deck.

Easy CD Creator Platinum enables you to identify which songs you want to copy to your CD, and in which order, and then proceeds to write the CD. It's very easy to use. As a special bonus, it also can create a jewel case insert for your new CD, although this is a real pain in the neck to use if you don't happen to look the fancy artwork they offer for default jewel case design. (I personally prefer not to waste printer ink on fancy graphics, but maybe you'll feel differently.) It automatically makes a list of all the songs you chose to include on the CD, and automatically fills in how long each song lasts. You can then adjust the font, add clip art to make it look a little fancier, or include additional text of your own choosing. It prints out the jewel case insert on normal-sized paper, and you can then use scissors to cut it out.

Although Easy CD Creator comes with a sound editor utility, I found it was difficult to use and primitive in what it was able to do, and I don't recommend it. I decided to purchase a different software product for editing music.

If you have Internet access, you can find out more about Easy CD Creator Platinum by visiting Roxio's web site at:

www.roxio.com

If you decide to purchase Easy CD Creator Platinum, be sure to visit this web site after your copy arrives and download the most recent patch from the tech support part of the web site. Roxio periodically fixes product defects or adds minor enhancements, and places those in a file called a "patch" on their web site for customers to download free of charge. I have found the patches to be very valuable in correcting problems I had using the product. I check the web site about once every two months to see whether a new patch is available.

Easy CD Creator has two basic options for assembling songs into a CD: you can either have a 2-second gap between each song, or you can have exactly a 0-second gap between each song.

However, I prefer to use a different product called CD Architect, which is made by a company called Sonic Foundry. It allows for more professional effects when mixing music to make a performance CD. It lets you control exactly how each transition will work. With CD Architect, you can have a gap of any length you specify between two songs, or you can have one song begin precisely after another, or you can have a cross-fade in which one song fades out as the next one fades in. These transition effects make your resulting music sound as though it was assembled by a professional sound studio.

When Roxio introduced version 6 of Easy CD Creator, they included a transition feature, but I haven't used it enough to comment on whether it's as good as the functionality I've been using for 5 years in CD Architect.

My recommendations:

• For starters, use the software that came with your sound card to import music from your stereo system into your computer, and use the software that came with your CD recorder to create CD's with it. These software products will cost you nothing extra beyond what you already paid for the hardware, and they will help you evaluate whether using your computer to create your dance music is something you want to embrace. Try these products for a while before spending money on additional tools.
• If you want to edit music, either cutting songs, adding reverb effects to announcements, inserting fades, etc., consider buying Screenblast Sound Forge for that purpose (described below). This will also enable you to save files in the formats used by the Internet (RealAudio, MP3, etc.)
• If you start feeling limited by the software that came with your sound card or CD recorder, and if you find yourself wanting to use your computer for a large amount of music work, consider Easy CD Creator Platinum as the next step in your sound editing adventures.
• If you feel very committed to using your computer for music preparation, and you want to be able to create CD's with sophisticated transition effects from one song to another, consider purchasing CD Architect. It's a little more expensive than Easy CD & DVD Creator, but I find it to be very valuable and I use it for all the CD's I make for performances.

The product I recommend for editing music is Screenblast Sound Forge, which is made by a company called Sonic Foundry. You can download it directly from their web site at http://www.sonicfoundry.com, or purchase it through your favorite computer retailer. Sonic Foundry also makes a more expensive product called Sound Forge (i.e., without the "Studio" in the product name), but I see no compelling reason to spend the extra money on it for the types of projects described in this article. I've found that the "Studio" version is perfectly adequate.

With Screenblast Sound Forge, you can edit "wav" files, then either save the results to a "wav" or MP3 file suitable for writing to audio CD, or save the results as RealAudio for putting on your web site. This makes it ideal for people who want to sell music over the Internet to produce brief 30-second sound clips illustrating what the songs sound like. Or, do what I did--record your cat meowing and put that on your web site.

<==Click here to hear my cat meowing.

Screenblast Sound Forge makes it easy to cut music with precision. It can be very frustrating to find a recording of a song you love only to discover that it's too long to use in the show you are planning. With Screenblast Sound Forge, you can cleanly excise part of the music without any annoying gaps or hiccups in the rhythm. By writing the resulting "wav" file to a recordable CD, you then have a digital version of your cut music. You can make compilations from it over and over when mixing and matching your favorite songs into shows without the degradation in sound quality that comes of copying from one tape to another.

On the flip side, you can also duplicate a clip of music. For one show I was in, we wanted a certain song to have a longer introduction than our original recording had, so with Screenblast Sound Forge I just copied and pasted a musical phrase. The result is so seamless that no one could tell where I did it.

Special effects are another great feature in Screenblast Sound Forge. You can fade your music in or out. You can add reverb or echoes to voice announcements that will be part of your performance tape. You can insert silence for precisely the desired length of time.

Once you have a CD writer, you can also use it to make backups of data from your computer. You can say good-bye to slow, noisy, unreliable, expensive tape backups, and use CD's instead. A single inexpensive CD can hold up to 640 megabytes of data. Most CD writers come with the necessary software to format a CD as a data CD.

I don't bother using a backup program with data compression when making my backup CD's. Instead, I just use Windows Explorer to copy my files and directories from my hard disk to the CD in a coherent order. Alternatively, I could use Easy CD Creator Deluxe, because it can create data CD's as well as music CD's, but I happen to have a personal preference for the Explorer interface. You should try both, and decide for yourself which you like better.

The technology described in this article makes it very easy to make multiple high-quality copies of your favorite songs. Please don't abuse the technology by making copies of your favorite music for your friends or students-that deprives the artists whose music you love so much of their living.

It's perfectly legal and ethical to use this technology to:

• Preserve your old vinyl records and cassette tapes on CD for your own use.
• Assemble your favorite music into tapes or CD's for use in your performances.
• Create a collection on a single CD of songs to use in class when you're teaching.
• Create cut versions of long songs for your shows.
• Put short clips of music samples from tapes or CD's that you sell on your web site to help capture the interest of prospective buyers.

But please don't give a copy of a CD you've made to another person--that's wrong, both legally and ethically. Support the artists by purchasing your own copies and encouraging your friends and students to do the same!

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