Okay, I'm ready to start gathering songs for this
year's Styles CD.

First of all, here's the deadline - July 11. Let me
repeat that - July 11 July 11 July 11 July 11 July
11

Did I mention the deadline is July 11?? ;o) I
absolutely positively definitely need everything by
then or it won't be on the disc. Period. No
exceptions! I'll post reminders periodically until
then so there will be no excuses. Don't e-mail me on
July 12 and say, "But Eric..." I'll pretend like that
message got lost in my spam filter. I'm serious! :o)

I think we're going to go with an MP3 CD this year, so
we can fit as much as we can and make it a more of a
'yearbook' than it has been in the past. However, I'd
much rather you don't send me MP3 files, unless they
are at least 192 kBps or higher. Most MP3 sites want
you to encode MP3s at 128 kBps, and that may be the
default for your MP3 ripper, so please double check
that and use the highest possible rate you can.
Ideally, though, you will send me the original WAV
file, so I can make the MP3 myself from that. Plus,
I'm not 100% sure that this will be an MP3 disc, so
definitely send the WAV if at all possible.

I highly recommend all files be sent to me through
http://www.sendthisfile.com If you don't already have
an account there, you can easily sign up for a free
account and once that is set up, send your files to me
at this address - ericendres (at) yahoo.com If you
only have a dial-up connection, it will take hours to
upload a WAV file, so start it before bed and it
should be done my morning. If your submission is
already on a CD I have, then that will be fine.

***If you must mail something... please read this
carefully... you must do it almost immediately... as I
will only be home until June 20, and then will be on
tour and won't be back until about July 25 (which,
you'll notice, is past the JULY 11 DEADLINE). If it's
not in my mailbox on or before June 20, I will not
have it in time and you'll still have to figure out a
way to upload it by the JULY 11 DEADLINE. Another
option is that I may make my FTP server available to
upload files into, but if you can just do the
sendthisfile thing, that would be the best option.

Before submitting anything, please e-mail me and let
me know what you will be submitting and how, so I know
what to expect.

I'm asking for 3 songs from everyone, from which I
will choose one (or two if space permits). If you
don't have 3 recorded songs, then please send the best
of what you've got. I would prefer that you send
something from your most recent work, or from within
the last year, as we want this to be a 'yearbook' kind
of thing. If there's a song that you love and think
should be on here, but it's five years old, I'd rather
not use that. The exception to that may be if you've
never had any song on one of the Styles discs before.
In that case, it would be fine to introduce you to the
group or to the series with whatever song of yours may
best represent you. Otherwise, though, let's try to
keep it current with what everyone is up to at this
time, or at least from your most recent release.
However, with the DEADLINE BEING JULY 11, don't try to
record something new unless you're absolutely sure you
can get it done and SUBMITTED BY JULY 11. If you're
not sure about that, then please go with something
from your back catalog, as recent as possible.

I'm not going to care much about the quality of the
recordings, though... this year we're trying to just
represent everyone as a 'yearbook' of our group...
nobody will be excluded for poor recording quality.
However, given a choice from your submitted songs, I
may opt for a better recorded track over another that
isn't as well recorded. And odds are that the better
recorded songs will be sequenced sooner on the disc.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not compress or 'normalize' or
limit your tracks. I'd much rather have the raw mix
than a 'mastered' track that is destroyed from way too
much compression and limiting. Don't worry at all
about how loud or quiet your mixed track is. I will
bring up the volume if necessary, and your songs will
end up being roughly as loud as everything else,
regardless, so if they have been compressed and
limited to death to increase the overall volume, that
will be for naught as I'll end up having to reduce the
volume anyway. And your dynamics will be killed for
nothing. If the songs have already been professionally
mastered, then that's fine. I really can't emphasize
this enough, though, because having done several
compilation discs, I see way too many tracks that are
over compressed.

Let's see... what else? I'll be sending the final
master in to Diskfaktory to make 100 CDs. That will
cost $249. Tim Porter, can you either do the whole
job yourself for $299, or just do the graphics for
$50? Otherwise, who can donate some time to do a very
basic cover, insert (2 panel, front/back only), and
tray card? Regardless, we'll need to raise that $249
or $299 somehow. Can someone volunteer to try to find
a sponsor or donor for that? That would be the
easiest thing to do, as opposed to trying to collect
$10 or so from every artist. That will be a pain, and
difficult to keep track of, as I've understood from
those who have done the Styles discs before. However,
come the deadline to send the CD to Diskfaktory or to
Tim Porter, which is likely to be by mid to late July
(which is why THE DEADLINE TO RECEIVE EVERYTHING NEEDS
TO BE JULY 11)... if we don't have the money then we
could be in trouble. So I may implement a payment per
artist plan if we don't get a sponsor or donor fairly
soon. But let's try to get a sponsor or donor, eh?
Then we'll figure out some distribution method where
each artist gets one or two discs for free and then we
try to sell the rest to recoup something for the
donor, or to go into a fund for next year's CD.

I'm thinking we should call it "LDS Styles 2006" or
maybe "LDS Styles - The Class of 2006", to go along
with the 'yearbook' idea. And since last year's
wasn't named "LDS Styles 6", the "2006" won't really
be a conflict with that. But if anyone wants to
suggest another title, we still have some time to
determine that.

I'm looking forward to hearing what everyone submits
and making this a great yearbook for our group!

Best,
EE

P.S. THE DEADLINE IS JULY 11!!!!!!!!!