Press vinyl
Introduction
If you're making dance, hip hop or drum n bass, vinyl is the only way to go. Now that many DJs are using advanced CD players, you can use CDs or even MP3s for promotional purposes. But there's still a cachet about vinyl in the clubbing world, so if you want to put out your own tunes for release then at some point you're going to need the black stuff.
This section takes you through the basics, including:
- Costs
- Minimum Order
- Acetates
- Limits to what you can cut
- Inner Groove Distortion
- Test Pressings
Minimum Orders
There's a high start-up cost with vinyl, because you need to make a metal mould from which to produce the disks.
Then there's the fact that the pressing plant has to shut down the press in order to change the mould for a new disk. During that time, they aren't making money out of their equipment, so they don't like doing it too often.
For this reason they'll specify a minimum of around 350 disks per order.
"I would start off with the minimum that pressing companies will do, say 350 or something like that. If it's not gonna sell, it's not worth doing more. You're stuck with hundreds of pounds worth of records that you can't sell stacked in your lounge, and it's demoralising. I've done it before - we've had records where we've got stock left over and it's just a horrible feeling."
Justin Rushmore - Head Honcho, Fingerlickin' Records
Cost
At the moment, 300 double-sided, white label 12s in plain black sleeves will cost you around £700 to produce from a DAT or CD master.
Add more if you want artwork on the label or sleeve.
Many duplication companies will arrange the whole process for you, including artwork if you want it.
You may be able to save yourself some money by dividing the process into the cutting and manufacturing stages described below and shopping around for the best deal for each.
You can find your local vinyl duplication company in a music directory (see list)or by having a look through the 'Yellow Pages' or the classified ads of music magazines.
At this point, it's usually a good idea to get on some message boards and see if anyone can recommend a good mastering house and/or pressing plant for your disks. You may even find that it's cheaper to go abroad.
If you're getting disks mass-produced, you may need a license from the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS). Have a look at 'How to... MCPS' for more information.
Acetates (Dub Plates)
An acetate - or dub plate - is a one-off disk which is playable on an ordinary turntable. Any company which can master vinyl disks can also cut acetates. They're a bit redundant these days, unless you're interested in getting your tunes into the really underground parties that can't afford DJ CD players.
Acetates are softer than vinyl so they're only good for about 10 or 15 plays before the sound on them decays badly. They cost £30-£60 per dub depending on the cutting house you use.
You may have to pay additional costs if you have any mastering done to improve the sound of your music before the engineer commits your tune to the dubplate. (More on mastering)
Established artists sometimes get an acetate made of just one instrument from a tune they're making, so that a DJ can scratch it and cut it up for effect. You can do this with CD these days, although the hire cost of a DJ CD player may be similar to getting a dub plate cut, so check around.
"Turntablists often get acetates made of their breaks and vocals and spin-backs for competitions, so they know where everything is. You can also do lock-grooves. If you get the BPM right and the diameter of the cut, you can put the first beat of a loop on a disk and then cut around and get back to where you started at the very end of the loop. When you play it back, you drop the needle in there and it'll just go around and around forever. That's a lock-groove. It takes a bit of judgement and luck to cut."
Sean Magee - Mastering Engineer, Abbey Road Studios
Making a Record
Here's a walk through the process with some hints from the experts on what to look out for along the way.
The first stage is to transfer your tune onto a lacquer master disk. This is a metal disk covered with a soft(ish) plastic coating.
Using a lathe - which works kind of like a backwards record player - the grooves of the record are cut into the plastic surface of the lacquer. The lathe is hooked up to a tape machine (or CD player) and your tune is played on it.
The cutting tip of the lathe responds to the music, making the groove that your punters' record players will eventually play.
Each side of the disk needs a separate lacquer - so you'll need a pair if you're planning to use both sides of a 12".
As the lacquers need to be kept very clean, they have a handling area around the edge to keep thumbprints off the grooves, so they're bigger than a usual record.
Cutting lacquers is a nerve-racking and rather mysterious process which requires experience and a little guesswork.
Limits of What You Can Cut
Vinyl works by wobbling the needle of your turntable from side to side as it tracks around the groove. In order to move the needle, the groove of the record needs to move from side to side.
For loud passages, the groove needs to move from side to side a lot. But don't forget that it's a spiral - if you sawed a record in half and looked across the cut, you'd see what looked like a load of grooves side by side. This is what limits the loudness of a record.
If you try and wobble the groove too much, it runs into its neighbours. This is known as an "intercut" and means that the record will be unplayable.
"When you're mixing for vinyl it always pays to be wary of putting in too much of one part of the music. For instance, if you're doing dub or garage, you'll want loads of bass. But if you put too much on, it limits how loud you can cut the disk. That means that the other parts of the music - vocals or whatever - will sound too quiet, so you have to tune some of the bass out to bring them up again."
"On the other hand, if there's not enough bass then the engineer can turn it up when they're mastering the disk. It always, always sounds better if you add more of something when you're mastering than if you have to take it away. So it pays to be a bit cautious and add more if needs be"
Ray Staff - Mastering Engineer, Sony Music
"Big bursts of high frequencies are really bad. If you imagine the stylus cutting this material and it suddenly starts vibrating side to side 10,000 times a second, it'll just tear a hole in the lacquer. Certain frequencies will always distort as well. Rhodes [electric pianos] are really bad for that. Lovely instrument, bastard to cut!"
Sean Magee - Mastering Engineer, Abbey Road Studios
Inner Groove Distortion
Just a big name for a fact of physics.
Records rotate at a constant speed. So if you think about a stylus playing the start of a 12", it's quite a long way round the edge and back to where you started. Nearer the centre, it's a much smaller circle so the amount of vinyl that runs past the stylus with each turn of the record is much less.
The practical effect of this is that there's a big drop off in the quality of the sound of vinyl as you play through the disk. This is called inner groove distortion and it affects high frequency sounds most - things like hi-hats.
So although you can cram around 12 minutes of music onto a 45 RPM 12", by about 5 minutes in, the sound quality is audibly worse. For best quality, you should try and keep your tunes shorter than about 6 or 7 minutes.
"Where you really notice is with things like high pitched snares, the ones that really ping that people use on techno records. By the time you get right to the middle of the lacquer - 11 or 12 minutes in - they've completely disappeared."
Sean Magee - Mastering Engineer, Abbey Road Studios
"I think if you're pressing a 12" record, you should only put on one track a side, because the quality, the volume you get, the power of it, is so much better. If you try and cram two on there, or three, you lose a quality of sound. As a rule, with all the releases we do, we'll always put one a side - it gives a nice, chunky loud thing."
Justin Rushmore - Head Honcho, Fingerlickin' Records
Messages
The final stage of the cutting session is undoubtedly the most important. That is to engrave your message onto the disk.
Lacquer is soft enough to engrave by hand with a metal stylus and, since time immemorial, artists have had their cryptic thoughts etched into their lacquers to share with the world.
If you needed another reason to go for vinyl rather than CD, then this has to be it.
It's dying out now and we think it's high time the tradition was revived. Have a look through your record collection and you'll find that only a few have anything other than serial numbers engraved on them.
"It's really important. I usually ask at the beginning of the session if there's any messages the clients want written in. A lot of the newer artists and labels don't know what you're on about. So you explain and then it's quite fun watching everyone phone each other up and deciding what they want to say."
Sean Magee - Mastering Engineer, Abbey Road Studios
Metalwork
The lacquer now goes to the factory, where it is used to produce the mould to make the records.
First, it's electrically plated with metal which is then peeled off. The metal is a "negative" version of the disk. It has ridges where a record has grooves.
Think of it like pushing your thumb into a ball of Blu-Tac. You'll get an inside out thumbprint. The ridges in the skin of your thumb will make grooves in the Blu-Tac. This is what we want because the stamper of the record press is like your thumb and the vinyl is the Blu-Tac.
You could use the metalwork to press disks but if it got damaged - or when it wore out - you'd have to go right back to the start and cut a new lacquer.
So instead, the back to front disk goes through another plating and peeling process to produce a right-way-round-again disk known as a mother. This can then be coated again to make the negative stampers which will produce the disks.
Test Pressings
The edges of the stampers are trimmed down so that they can be mounted in the pressing machine. A hole is punched in the middle and we're ready to start making records.
First, a short run of test pressings (TPs) is done and sent to the person who ordered the records to check for sound quality. You can ask for more if you like to use a promotional copies ahead of the complete run.
This is quite a common thing to do, but you need to be a bit careful. It takes a bit of time for a pressing machine to get up to speed and temperature. Consequently a short run of TPs can vary quite a bit in sound quality. Be careful that you're not sending club or radio DJs copies of a tune that sound bad.
Once the TPs have been approved, the full production run starts. Small pellets of vinyl are heated up to soften them and then formed into a round "biscuit" which is fatter and narrower than the finished disk will be.
The biscuit goes into the press, where the stamper presses the grooves into the biscuit, which is squashed out into a wider, thinner disk at the same time.
"I'd always suggest getting an acetate cut at the same time as the lacquer. Keep it in good condition and use it to compare the test pressings with. That way, you know that any differences are because of problems at the factory. If you're not happy with the TPs, mastering engineers are usually pretty helpful if you're trying to figure out what's gone wrong. Sometimes nothing really has. Record presses are designed to turn out hundreds of disks in a run and so they're not quite up and running properly by the end of a short TP run."
Ray Staff - Mastering Engineer, Sony Music
"You can't compare vinyl with CD because they're not the same thing. People come back and say 'how come my 7" single doesn't sound like the CD single?' It's not the same medium. It's like comparing CD and cassette."
Sean Magee - Mastering Engineer, Abbey Road Studio
Direct Metal Mastering (DMM)
DMM is another way of mastering for vinyl. Instead of a lacquer, the master is cut into a copper disk.
DMM gives a much clearer sound but the grooves aren't as deep. That means that your tune will sound less fat when played over a club sound system.
It's fine for ambient music and albums but you should avoid it for dance or hip hop 12s.
More... from How to...
MCPS for people releasing their own material
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onemusic/management/mcpsownp01.shtml
Promote your releases
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onemusic/promotion/releasep01.shtml
Approach the media
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onemusic/promotion/mediap01.shtml
Use distributors for DIY releases
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onemusic/distribution/diyp01.shtml
Distribute your music online
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onemusic/distribution/webdistp01.shtml
Music Directories...
The Unsigned Guide
Although concentrating on North West England, this directory contains extensive national listings for record companies, publishing companies, venues, management, media and training. It's priced at £30 and tailored towards unsigned artists.
It can be ordered online from:
www.theunsignedguide.com
Or by calling 0161 907 0029
Music Industry Manual
Specialising in dance music and DJing, this directory lists nightclub venues, equipment, labels, shops, distributors, promotors studios and more. It covers the UK and international. It is the bible for DJs and dance producers.
It costs £45 from:
www.musicindustrymanual.net
Music Week Directory
Music Week is the trade publication for the UK Music Industry. Each year it publishes a directory listing thousands of useful contacts in every area of the business. It's free to subscribers, so your local library may have a copy.
It costs £55 and can be ordered online at:
www.subscription.co.uk/products/mwdir
Or by calling 01858 438893
Showcase International Music Book
This is a phone directory for the music industry, listing thousands of record, publishing and other companies. You may find that your library has a copy.
Or buy it for £55 from:
www.showcase-music.com/order.htm
Phone: 020 8977 7711
E-mail: orders@showcase-music.com
(c) BBC Radio 1 OneMusic 2005