Hi Sharon,

I would be skeptical of the price quoted for your recording. In my experience, studio time costs between $50 and $75/hour, and that is in Tucson, which probably has lower rates than other areas. Then there is mixing time and the cost of pressing the cd and the cost of getting your liner notes written and formatted, if you don't do it yourself.

If you only want a recording of your music for fun, $500-$1000 might be more reasonable. My band did a demo, which had about 6 cuts, cost $500, plus $8 per cd (purchased separately). Although it was a great start for our band: we learned about recording, and did some early promotions, we chose to upgrade significantly when we recorded our "real" cd. We pressed 1000 and the total costs for recording, mixing and pressing was $7000. Professional recording people have since commented on how good the sound quality is.   I also have a friend with a band that recorded a cd of old time tunes for $1000. They all gathered round a couple microphone and got a nice authentic sound. This is not possible for all types of music.

So, you need to think about what type of sound quality you want, whether your instrumentation will be recorded on separate tracks from your vocals and the purpose of the cd (how professional you want it to appear).

Good luck, Recording is a constant learning curve, but fun.

Claire