Acoustic Open Mic Recording

Recording

Freeville Music records and edits Acoustic Open Mic at the Nines, as well as providing the website and posting the recordings. Your host Jerry Tanner concentrates on making it sound good right then and there and that almost guarantees that the recording will sound good, too.

People (aka too many Jerrys)

Artists: That's you! You're what it's all about. Your names are in the pulldown list on the search page.
Open Mic Hosts and Live Sound: Jerry Tanner, Lisa Gould and the Nines (with help from Jerry Codner)
Recording and Website: Freeville Music which is Jerry Codner and Patty McNally (and help from Stuart Allen) and impossible without the artists, the hosts and especially the Nines.

Original Music

If you play original music, then we put it on the website for everyone to listen to, unless we hear otherwise from you or unless we don't know that it is original. In order for us to post music on the website, songs have to be original and uncommitted to anyone else or already in the public domain (for example, songs published before 1923).

Please contact us by email and let us know the names of your songs. Recordings are usually available in less than a week.

Use our search engine to find and listen to your recordings. Our sole method of distribution is by posting songs on the website. We do not make CD's and we do not send songs by email (see business below).

Cover Songs

Play 'em all you want. You play it (giving proper credit to the author, of course). We happen to record it. Then it goes nowhere.

Fortunately for you, the Nines already pays a regular and hefty sum of money to companies which represent writers and music publishers so that performers may play other people's songs. But, in order for us to post music on a website, it has to be original and uncommitted to anyone else or already in the public domain. We do not make CD's and we do not send songs by email (see business below).

Look for "How to Legally Sell Downloads of Cover Songs" at CD Baby. As far as we know, providing free downloads is the same as selling.

Traditionals are in a gray area. Songs from before 1923 are generally in the public domain. Songs after that are generally not. "Oh, Suzannah" is in the public domain. "Blowin' in the Wind" is not. Try not to get us in trouble.

If you cover a song, you should tell the audience the name of the song and who wrote it. The writer is not the most recent band that decided to cover it, and "you''ll recognize this one" is not the name of the song. Please enlighten the audience with the writer's name and the name of the song you are about to play.

Note to copyright holders: if we have posted a copyrighted song it was not intentional. Please contact us with the link to the song and we will remove it immediately.

Open Mic Courtesies

We apologize for stating the obvious to 99% of open mic performers. This list is for the people who come in through the fire door when it is 30°F outside, ignoring the huge sign that says "Use Other Door".

It's called Acoustic Open Mic Night, although, yes it is amplified. Please bring your acoustic instrument with or without a pickup. Electric bass and keyboard are fine. No one has ever been turned away.
Usually the list fills up so it's three songs or fifteen minutes, whichever is less. Understand that other people want to play. Go ahead and play a medley. It's your fifteen minutes.
Be ready when it's your turn and tune up ahead of time as much as possible.

Even the most hard-core polkaphobe would probably agree that an accordian sounds better than almost anyone tuning a guitar.
-gwilley
If you have a band, please tell the host and he'll try to arrange for more playing time.
If you play a cover, please give credit to the author and announce the name of the song. No, not everyone may "recognize this next one".

Technical Information

At this moment, the Nines uses a twelve channel mixer, two powered speakers and three microphones for open mic.

Freeville Music usually records and when they do they record the entire session, using an Alesis Firewire mixer at 44.1 kHz and 24 bit sampling, directly onto a Macintosh Powerbook computer running Audacity, a free audio recording and editing program available for Linux, Mac and Windows operating systems.

Four hours of music takes about 1.5 GB of disk space per recorded channel. MP3's are ripped at 128 kb/sec and occupy about 1 MB of disk space per minute of playing time. Download speed takes a backseat to sound quality. Artists who post these recordings elsewhere may want to downsample to 32 kb/sec to accomodate dial-up listeners and people with short attention spans.

Editing takes about four hours per week. This includes editing out interludes, normalizing volume levels and labeling all of the songs. We generate an individual MP3 file for each song, usually about 40 per night. Finally, we post originals and update our database connecting each song with the artist name. As of January 2008, ID3v2 tags in the MP3 files are also modified to include the artist names and the song titles.

Business

Typically, musicians do not have a lot of money. Freeville Music is set up to record and distribute songs to performer/songwriters for free. All originals are put on the website. We are not in business. We receive utterly no compensation for this service (not even free beer!).

While live recordings may contain flaws, artists get a chance to record almost every single week and gain experience with performing live. They can pick and choose what versions get published on myspace or elsewhere, including demo discs for potential live gigs. A good live recording establishes needed credibility.

Some people want CDs or recordings of cover songs. Freeville Music provides a search engine, custom playlist creation and streamed audio that make it easy to burn your own CDs. For those with limited internet access, please ask a friend or family member to download your recordings and burn them to CD.

Cover songs that are not traditionals (usually published prior to 1923) are usually copyrighted by someone, and technically they can not even be recorded without paying royalties to the copyright holder.

We provide a free service that demands a significant amount of time. Please contact Freeville Music to discuss suitable fees for individualized service beyond what is provided for free.

Thanks to Stuart Allen for his help with making recordings and to John Sikora and Stuart Allen for researching the copyright issues.