How to Record an MP3 Holiday Song with a Laptop: Quick & Dirty Style!

When you want to record a “quick and dirty” holiday MP3 for your fans, the first thing you need to do is look at the means that are already and easily available to you. If you have the time, of course you can always write a song, and then upload it with whatever technology you have around you. If you have the creativity and the means to make a video like Space Zombie Christmas, knock yourself out! My HP laptop has a Sound Recorder option available in the Accessories section, so at the very least, I could record an a capella track if I wanted.

But I wanted to do something a little more than that, so I decided on getting a Karaoke track from iTunes for 99 cents. For weddings or other gigs where I had to use a background track, I used to go to Colony Records in NYC and buy an entire Karaoke CD for $30. Mind you, I would only need one instrumental track out of twenty,
which would be a bit of waste. Through a tip I learned from an opera singer, turns out that you can buy ONLY the track you want for $1.00 at iTunes. Very cool.

It’s also important for me to mention that these holiday tracks are for PROMO ONLY, and will not be for sale. That would be a violation of the copyright of the Karaoke Band’s recording, which is a BIG NO-NO! If I get any cease and desist letters, I’ll remove the songs with the quickness, so get your holiday MP3s now!

My first step was to choose the song. I started by entering “christmas karaoke” into the iTunes search.

Then I tried searching for specific songs, such as entering “12 days of christmas karaoke”

By checking the “popularity” column, I can get an idea of which karaoke tracks are the less cheesy ones. I also click to hear samples myself, to make sure that the particular version is in the right tempo and key. For these kinds of recordings, there are no vocal overdubs, so choose a song that you know particularly well (or practice the mess out of it!)

So I purchased “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” from iTunes. To record the song, I played the song, using iTunes.

By placing a headphone mic between my voice and my laptop speakers, I experimented with the distances in order to get a decent live “mix” recorded by my laptop’s Sound Recorder.

After finally recording a take that I liked, I played it back in my iPod headphones. The track sounded okay, but it felt like something was missing, as if the song was stuck inside the track, and the holiday joy didn’t quite come across.

Then I remembered that I had purchased an iPod voice memo gadget ages ago, also known as the Belkin TuneTalk Stereo. I had yet to use it, but now seemed like a good opportunity to figure it out!

By adding this gadget to my iPod, I’m now a bit more dangerous!

Here’s my new and improved recording set-up

It took a few tries to get the recording together from a technical standpoint. I had to trigger iTunes to play the track with my right hand, and record the vocals using my left hand on the iPod. And I had to remember to click all the gadgets in the correct order.

This time I liked the live sound of the recording a lot. I sang a few more versions until I was finally satisfied enough to relieve my neighbors of the misery caused by hearing the same Christmas song over and over at 2am in the morning. Then I burned the track to a CD.

Since the CD contains a .WAV file, I then had to rip it into MP3 form. Since I still don’t know how to do that using a computer, I used my secret weapon: my standalone KLH CDR-2000 MP3 Recorder.

I placed the CD-Rom with the .WAV file on the left side, and a blank CD-Rom on the right side.

Then I clicked the buttons that convert the .wav file to into MP3: Voila! The MP3 is ready!

After the MP3 was burned to a CD-Rom, I then saved it to my hard drive, and uploaded it to my You Send It account so I could share it with you lovely people.

Enjoy my holiday MP3s below!

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Please Come Home For Christmas

###

Like any good Rock Star, I blame this on my publicist.

As you may have heard, Ariel Hyatt is holding her first Holiday Fundraiser. So like a good girl, I set up my blog to support my fave charity, Songs of Love. And I think I’m all set, right? That is, until I get the email from Ariel, saying something to the effect of,

“Send me a holiday song so I can promote you!”

“Just like that, record a holiday song? Ha!” I think to myself. But when your publicist assigns a task like that, I know damn well that she is offering an opportunity here. And I love opportunities. So I challenged myself with the question: With little resources, how can I record a holiday promo song???? And this blog post was the answer. For those of you on Twitter who requested the specific how-to’s that I used, I hope these tips help you too! In all honesty, I’m flattered that you even asked 😉

I hate when musicians apologize onstage before they even start playing, so I will not apologize for any recording imperfections, glaring or otherwise. Enjoy my tracks for the love offered.

Happy Holidays!