The Stereo Bus Blog - Daily Music Production Tips

This post focuses on how to create a professional looking and sounding portfolio disc that won’t make more enemies than friends.

A good portfolio will open up a lot of doors for you as a producer or engineer. What makes a great portfolio? Well, it obviously should sound good. That depends on the quality of your work - you just have to not screw it up if it’s already solid. With a portfolio it also has to look good. Let’s face it - a lot of people to whom you’ll want to be dropping off your CD will be getting a lot of submissions. So what does that require? First, choose if you want to make a CD or a DVD. A CD is definitely easier, but a DVD is still a little unusual. If any of your material has been made into a music video or used in film, it’s great to include the visuals as well. Additionally, DVDs can display album artwork and additional information on the screen. It’s really up to you and your resources.

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This post is going to focus on the always fun task of managing backups of your creative material and software assets.

Long before I was ever professionally into music I was a computer nerd. I started programming computers when I was in 3rd grade. As a result, the fact that music production is largely synonymous with working on computers doesn’t bother me a whole lot. But with this integration with computers comes many extra things to watch out for and learn. As far as analog tape and hardware equipment is concerned, it is either physically present and working or it isn’t. These things could get damaged or lost, but they won’t just disappear for no good reason or instantly stop functioning to the point where they can’t be repaired somehow. But these are the sorts of situations that creative people have to deal with when working in the digital realm. I have had at least two friends contact me, absolutely despondent, when the the lone hard drive containing five years of their creative output kicked the bucket. Without any other location for these irreplaceable resources, all of our hard work can be gone in an instant. This is why we make backups.

Not only can our creative work be lost, but we can actually loose our tools as well. It takes a long time to get a computer set up the way we like to work. Think about all the time we spend configuring our DAW, installing the software, authenticating the plugins, creating a workspace in which we feel comfortable. Having to recreate this environment in the event of a disaster is wasted time. This is yet another case for backups.

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This post focuses on 25 things that a producer should probably have with them at any session.

One of the best things to be when working as a producer is prepared. Not only does it feel awesome to have exactly what the situation calls for, but it helps the session run smoothly. I’m the sort of guy to carry way too much stuff with me at any given moment, but this list is a list of things that have saved my butt on several occasions.

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