Friday, August 12, 2011

Keep the Mood with Ending Space

Is your goal to distribute your Indie music on the Web? Then this hint can be useful. As a musician-recording studio, you can control how long the 'mood' continues at the end of your song.

What do I mean? Here's an example: I downloaded from my website a beautiful, quiet meditative orchestra song and one of my fast-moving ragtime songs. Two MP3 tracks copied onto a CD. (They're free to download by anyone, including me:)
I listened to DESPERATE PRAYER's relaxing, peaceful, Renaissance style flute and violin music. But within a moment from the last note, my player suddenly blasted out that loud ragtime.
Well, it did awaken me quite efficiently. Thus I learned this hint:

When you go to burn a CD, you get a couple of choices of adding a few seconds between the CD tracks. You don't get that choice burning song files in MP3 format, at least in some programs. And much music online ready to be downloaded so people can learn how great your music is, is in MP3 format. The result: Your listeners just might lose the mood of your first song when the second song immediately plays and blasts away that mood.

Easy fix (in any recording program): At the end of your longest recording track (e.g., the piano track), add two blank measures. If your program assumes the song ends with the last note, it's easy to fool it (you win) by adding a fast high-pitch note at the end of that 2nd extra measure and lower the volume as far as it will go.

How much time? I just listen to the song's end and count beats in my head until I'm ready for the mood to end. A good test is to copy any loud-song mp3 onto an extra track, slide it to the end of your song, and see how much space you'd want between your song and the temporary test track. Just a hint for keeping your mood.... your song, your control! Much joy in being able to control Something in Life! c2018, 2011 DianaDee Osborne

Reprinted 2 Feb 2018