My partner and I hadn’t considered producing music for the adult industry when we first started recording together. Initially we just wanted to build a digital recording studio at my house so that we could jam together and record for fun. But, it wasn’t long after our first few recording sessions that we both realized that we were producing some very professional quality music. Aside from our dreams of putting together an alternative rock/rap demo album and becoming huge rock stars, we were also recording background/soundtrack music in our spare time.Web Girl Amanda Lexx and I used to chat a lot, and I had mentioned to her that I was recording music in my spare time. It just so happened that another model, Amanda’s friend Chrissy Moran, had recently told Amanda that she was looking for royalty-free music to use with her videos; naturally Amanda suggested that Chrissy and I get in contact. Chrissy ended up ordering a 10 track sensual music CD. We thought that 99 dollars for a 10-track CD, royalty-free, would be a fair price. Just like that, AdultIndustryMusic.com was born. The only problem was that we did not have 10 tracks of that style of music completed yet.

The Instruments

The music recording process beings with the instruments. When we made our initial investment into building our home recording studio, we took stock of what equipment and instruments we already had, and what equipment and instruments we needed. Randy had already been recording music for several years and had an assortment of guitars (acoustic, electric, bass); he also had effects pedals (bass and electric), microphones, headphones and an assortment of audio cables and cords. I had not one musical instrument to my credit. I played drums in my high school band, but I never pursued music past that age. Since Randy was the guitarist, and a damn good one at that (my dad was an excellent guitarist, as was my brother, but I never really took to it), I was left in charge of the rhythm section, percussion, drums and keyboards. Although Randy would be performing and recording the majority of the bass parts, he bought me a bass guitar as a gift and began to teach me the basics of playing it. I’m still just an intermediate bass player, but it sure is fun learning!

There’s nothing like the feeling of owning your first guitar. My dad had a beautiful acoustic guitar hand-made for me while we were on vacation in Mexico. I was too young then to really appreciate its craftsmanship, sound and beauty. But I will always remember that day and I will always remember the day, more recently, that I got my next guitar, when I was much older and fully able to appreciate it. The sleek and shiny, glossy black Ibanez bass guitar was a gift from my business partner. It was symbolic of our undertaking of the musical journey which was to be AdultIndustryMusic.com. I spent hour after hour playing around with and practicing with my new bass. I was hooked on it. Although I am still not our primary bass player, learning to play was like a rebirth, it rejuvenated my thirst for learning a new skill. The Ibanez bass guitar is in the $300-$400 range.

Since I wasn’t going to be the primary bass player, we next looked into purchasing a top-of-the-line keyboard. We did quite a bit of shopping around and found a great deal online for a Roland XP-60 digital keyboard workstation. It was a floor model at a retail music store in Northern California. When we bought it 2 years ago it was priced around $1,000.00, however I recently checked Ebay and found a few used ones listed around $600.00. At that time it was considered one of Roland‘s top models, next to the Roland XP-80. The XP-60 is a 61 key digital workstation with a built-in 16 track sequencer. The internal software is as versatile as any PC-based software. It comes with around 20,000 different sounds, effects and instruments, as well as 6 built-in drum sets, each with 61 percussion instruments. Sounds can be layered to create rich, full, original sounds. Expansion boards are available for around $250.00 each. These expansion boards allow you to add even more sounds and instruments to your keyboard. There is a steep learning curve with the Roland XP-60. I recommend purchasing a factory-authorized instructional video.

Drum Skeletons

In addition to picking up a new bass guitar and professional keyboard, I also found it necessary to buy a drum machine and professional CD player with built-in effects and digital scratching. The drum machine, Zoom MRT-3, is compact and affordable, yet versatile, with multiple sounds and ready-to-record drum loops in a variety of styles. The Zoom MRT-3 is a complete digital drum machine kit. It comes loaded with 299 pre-set drum patterns, or you can create your own patterns with the touch keypad. The CD player is by American Audio, and the centerpiece of the CD player is the top side jog wheel. The jog wheel is used to “scratch” with CDs much the same way you would with vinyl records on a regular turntable. There are 5 built-in effects including echo, flanger, scratch and more. We can come up with some pretty amazing scratching sounds with CDs as opposed to vinyl. The drum machine is very affordable, only around $100.00, but the CD player would set you back about $500.00.

Initially, I was against the use of drum samples. I wanted all of our music to be completely original, but without an actual drummer, we had to find an alternative that could match the sound, quality and variety of a real drummer. My first attempts at create complete drum tracks, which we refer to as skeletons, were created solely on the Roland XP-60 Keyboard Workstation. The variety of drum and percussion instrument sounds provided by the keyboard are impressive. You can create original drum loops and tracks, and record up to 16 instruments on 16 independent tracks. The versatility is its best feature, however playing the drum beats on the keyboard itself is not easy. Obviously, a keyboard isn’t designed primarily as a drum machine. The sequencer is difficult to learn and master. The sequencer is the keyboard’s internal digital recording studio. Looping, editing and copying tracks are tedious and meticulous tasks. Therefore, after many trial and error sessions, I found that the keyboard alone would be neither sufficient nor convenient enough to use to create drum tracks.

The compact Zoom MRT-3 Drum Machine is loaded with a variety of drum sounds as well, but the process of building songs by copying and stacking original or pre-set loops one after another is time consuming and difficult. It wasn’t long after my challenging experiences, my vain attempts to produce drum and rhythm tracks on the keyboard and drum machine, that I turned to what was to ultimately be my final solution: a combination of keyboard percussion, the drum machine and digital sampling.

Acid is the leading sample-based music production software on the market today. Now available in version 4.0, Acid allows anyone with a computer to compose professional quality sound tracks, songs and commercial music. Samples can be purchased online and are available in a variety of genres and styles. Acid offers literally tens of thousands of samples on CD. Each CD will set you back about $50, and the Acid program itself currently sells for $499. The Acid samples are all recorded in studio by some of the most renowned musicians in the world. For example, there is a CD featuring drum samples by none other than Mick Fleewood.

Building drum tracks in Acid is as easy as drag and drop. The samples provided me with the best sounding and most convenient method for creating basic drum loops and skeletons. However, it still takes a musical ear to compose quality tracks. It was still very important to me to retain originality with our tracks, so in the end I settled for combining all 3 pieces of our drum production equipment: keyboard, drum machine and samples.

Recording

Once I have completed composing a drum skeleton, it was on to the recording phase and the Roland VS890 Digital Workstation. It is an 8-track digital studio with a built-in 10 Gig hard drive and an external CD burner. Roland offers other, higher-priced models with more tracks – 16, 18 and 24. These can cost $3,000 or more. The VS890 was a perfect fit for our budget and our needs. Of course, more available tacks on the digital workstation would be more convenient, but the VS890 provides the ability to bounce several tracks down to 2 stereo tracks, thus opening up the remaining tracks for more recording. Once I had burned the drum skeletons to CD, I could record them to the VS890 via the regular CD player. The learning curve for the Roland VS890 is also steep. Allow yourself at least 2-4 weeks to learn how to use it. I also recommend purchasing a factory instructional video. With the drum tracks ready, it was time to bring in the guitars.

Guitars

Randy Myers (our guitarist and my partner) is an incredible musical talent. He has such a good ear for melodies, and he’s a ton of fun to record with. Guitar track recording sessions usually begin with the downing of a couple beers, after which we listen to the drum tracks that I have prepared. Randy begins to tune his guitars, which he always does prior to any recording session, and then he picks a track.

When he’s ready (two big beers usually does the trick), I leave the studio to go work on a computer in another room while Randy rehearses. He may already have a melody or riff in his head that he has been developing, but usually he gets his licks after a few beers and a lot of trial and error. More often than not what Randy ends up recording is something just short of amazing. I think some of our best tracks are those in which Randy’s guitars have the lead. Just so you know what you are getting yourself into cost wise, here is a list of the guitars he plays and their approximate cost:

Gibson Les Paul 2000 = $1,200
Gibson Les Paul 1978 = $500
Dean acoustic = $400
Fender acoustic =$250
BC Rich Base = $500
Alvarez acoustic = $1,000

Final Steps

The last step before mastering, also known as “mixing down” a song, is to add what we like to refer to as “spice.” This could be effects, scratching, more instruments, basically anything that we add to a song that we feel improves it. Then all that’s left to do is master the track. We like to listen to the track on a variety of CD players – car, in-home, computer, etc. We are looking for the best balance of sounds, instruments and audio levels so that the song can be played at any volume level and still sound pleasing. The first step of the mastering process is to master the song on the VS890 and to burn that song to CD. We then load the song into our audio production computer and master the final using audio production software. Our choice is Cakewalk, professional level audio production software comparable to Pro Tools and other similar programs. Each track of each AdultIndustryMusic.com CD is created with this method. Each recording artist has his own unique recording method and his own instruments. This is just what works for us.

We put our method to practice and recorded 10 tracks to fulfill our first, albeit unexpected music order for Chrissy Moran Entertainment. We subsequently recorded 2 more CDs and opened our Web site for business. We now offer 7 CDs (70 songs) in a variety of musical styles with an 8th CD on the way.

We use and recommend CafePress.com for audio and data CD fulfillment for small businesses that don’t want to or can’t commit to large orders. Plus, CafePress.com handles order processing, shipping and customer service. You can start selling your own CDs with little or no actual duplication costs.

I hired and shot the photos that we used for the CD artwork. Since our music is for commercial-use only, we only needed to create the artwork that would be on the CD itself. CafePress.com makes it easy. All you have to do is upload your artwork and add it to your CD via their online interface.

Getting started with music production was an investment. Since our intention was to just play and record music as a hobby, this whole business about starting a commercial music production business was just icing on the cake. I can’t begin to describe the feeling of accomplishment I felt when we made our first sale. It is so awesome and inspiring to be able to get paid for creating music.