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One
of the most important part of any party that is also one of the
most overlooked is the music situation. All too often
people hosting parties take music for granted while in
the planning stages. Party planners
frequently assume food and alcohol will be enough to
create an appropriate atmosphere. The reality is that
alcohol and to a lesser extent food is only part of the
battle. Music is key and changing CDs every 2
minutes is pain and annoying as hell. If
you want guests to stick around and enjoy themselves,
you'll have to provide a number of other items into the
mix, including great music. While this article is about
music, you should check out BrianX Magazine's article on
'How to throw a great
party' for additional useful information. Way
Back When
In the 'old' days, making a party mix was extremely
time consuming. You would need a double cassette
(tape) deck stereo, take out or borrow as many tapes as
you could, cue tapes to exactly where you wanted them to
start, and hit the record button. If you were lucky, you
had high speed dubbing so it would record at twice the
normal speed and could be done with more tapes in a shorter
period of time. Using
this method, it could easily take 2-3 hours for every 1
hour of tape to make a really good party mix. Today, the Internet has revolutionized the way we live
our lives and making party mixes fits right in! Oh!
How we love technology!
Creating
a CD is a multi-step process but once you get the hang
of it, you'll be pumping out CDs faster than J Lo
changes men. To get the process moving, you'll need a
few things. First,
you have to have a CD writer or 'burner.' It's called a
'burner' because you are actually using a laser to burn
the songs into the disc. The burner can be set to
different speeds but the truth is that the faster it
goes, the more chance you have of making a burning error
which sometimes leads a song to skip partway
through. Aside
from burning at a slow speed, you want to shut off
Internet connections and other programs on your
computer. Burning is a very delicate process and there
are a lot things that can lead to a messed up CD. The
CDs themselves are now made by many major companies and
can be purchased in bulk. Each CD could ultimately cost
you about 25-50 cents which is amazing! So you can
afford to mess up a few CDs before getting it right! The
Burning Program
There are
three main programs you will need to burn your CD.
First, the burner that you bought most likely came with
some software to install and use the burner. One of the
most popular programs to burn a CD is Roxio's
Easy CD creator (formerly known as Adaptec's Easy CD
creator). If you need suggestions for other CD burning
programs (or you need a free trial version of different
programs), try download.com
which has a lot to chose from. Downloading
Programs
So,
where do you get songs from?! Ultimately, the most efficient
place to get songs from is through music file sharing
programs. A popular one that was shut down as a free
service was Napster. Today, a handful of programs exist
that you can download and easily set up on your
computer. Two of these include WinMX.com
and kazaa.com.
The
media talk about these all the time because they are
controversial in that the music industry says that
downloading music is harming the industry. Yes, a few
people have been sued but as incredibly pathetic as that
may be, you really don't have to worry since the odds of
getting caught are very small.
In
any case, once you download the small program and
install it, just open it up, type in the songs you want
and download them! Sometimes you have to wait in line as
people limit the number of songs that can be uploaded
from their computer at a given time. Also, sometimes you
will see multiple people offering the same song but the
file sizes are varied. That's because people frequently
make the file sizes smaller to download that much
faster, even though they are compromising the sound. If
you feel a little lost, don't worry, you'll figure it
out once you get going!
Finally,
make sure you have anti-virus software to check all
songs that are downloaded. While most will be clean, you
have to remember that you're downloading from a
stranger's computer and so you never know what evil
lurks in their computer.
MP3s
make Waves!
At
the end of every file on your computer, you have a 2 or
3 letter combination, called a file extension. This
shows the type of file that it is and allows programs to
read the info appropriately as it opens. One of the most
common extensions for music is the .wav format. The
problem with this format is that it has a large file
size. So it could take hours to download a 3 minute
song.
To
account for this problem, a new format was created,
called .mp3 which is able to maintain the high quality
of your song but downloads much faster because the file
size is much smaller than a .wav file. Again, try download.com
which offers free conversion programs, some of which are
entirely free. Be sure to read the reviews of each
program to see which best suits you. Note that some
programs convert songs while maintaining excellent sound
quality while others can reduce it so when you blast the
song, it may sound distorted.
Conversion
Process
You
can listen to the music files that you downloaded on
your computer but .mp3 files won't work in most CD
players so you can't listen to them on your stereo, in
your car, or through your walkman. Once you have the
song in .mp3 format, you need to convert it to the .wav
format. This sounds like a pain in the butt but it can
be pretty quick.
Since
.wav files are larger, they will take up a lot of room
on your computer's hard drive. As such, you can actually
fill up the memory space on your computer! Try to avoid
converting songs that you don't intend to burn to save
room on your hard drive.
The
songs that make the party
The bottom line is that if you want to throw a great
party, the music you play is crucial. If people
dance, they will have an even better time! With the
right music playing, people will dance and stay longer
making the party a success.
Once thing you want to avoid is have people come and go
all night. If a few people come and see that you're
party is quiet and lame, they will leave. This problem
becomes a vicious cycle of people arriving, seeing that
there's no one there, and then leaving! One way to avoid
this problem is to make CD mixes and limit access to the
audio equipment so you don't have a bunch of people
fighting over the music.
Burn
it!
Once
you have the CD burner, the burner program, access to a
music downloading site, an mp3 to wav converter, you're
set to burn your music! You should listen to the entire
song that you have downloaded because they do get cut
off in the middle on occasion and you don't want to burn
a half a song.
To
make the CD, just select the songs you want from your
list and you're ready to go. If you're having a party,
you should have at least a couple different main CDs for
dancing and one with chill out music for when the night
is winding down. Each CD will only take a few minutes to
make, once you have the songs ready.
That's
All Folks
So
there you have it, the burning process and tips on
custom making your very own party CD. Note that if you
want to just burn a copy of a CD, you need 2 disc
drives, one of which must be a burner and the other can
be any CD-ROM drive. Just choose the copy option and
away you go! |
