So you finished your CD, what now? Part 2

It’s been a few weeks since part one, mainly due to the Christmas and New Years holidays and I also had an out-of-town show in the first week of January.

But here is what I have accomplished so far:

The photo shoot and the album artwork are done. The CDs are being manufactured.

We had a great time at Jürgen’s studio.

Check out this video of the photo session

 

I’m kind of excited about it. I think it looks great, hope you agree

 

I took care of the copyright registrations. That is done at the library of congress website. https://www.copyright.gov/registration/

You can copyright your whole album as a body of work for $55, which is cheaper than doing each song individually. I yet have to register the songs with ASCAP, but I still got time with that, since we are not sending a single to radio yet.

 

I started with writing charts and thinking about live arrangements. I have a show coming up in a few weeks and I want to add a few of the new songs into the repertoire. At the same time I am creating backing tracks for solo track dates, production tracks (mostly strings, rhythm guitars and sound f/x) for band gigs, which I run from my lap top computer. I also convert the backing tracks into jam tracks, which I am selling on my website along with lead sheets. These backing tracks need to have endings. Thinking ahead I recorded my songs with endings in the studio, even though most songs on the album have a fade out ending. This allowed me to easily make an alternative mix with an ending. This whole process takes a week or more. I just commit to do one or two a day until I’m done.

I am doing pretty well selling backing tracks on my website. Check out https://www.nilsguitar.com/jam-tracks/.  I am also considering creating tablature note by note transcriptions and importing them into a program like guitar pro 7 for students. This program allows them to isolate passages, slow them down and practice along with a pretty decent synthesized version of my guitar .

Or I just might create an instructional video for my YouTube channel, to show some of the tricks and fingerings I used in my solos and melodies.

All this I call secondary content and will ultimately help me to promote the new CD.

Still in the planning stages are the website update, the video shoot, editing promo videos from behind the scene footage I collected. I also researched some publicists, who could help me with my press releases and publicity. The social media campaign will slowly ramp up over the next weeks, especially once I have some video material.

 

As you can see this is easily a full time job. It can be overwhelming. There is a large variety of tasks to be done. I handle it by making a to do list, organizing it into different categories and checking off items bit by bit.

 

I will let you know in my next blog how my progress is moving along. Until then

Cheers, NILS

 

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