[The Beatsmith]

Hi

I see that people charge by the track usually. That's fine, however i'm creating my own personal project/album, separate to the mixing work i do. The album is going to be an instrumental album, and i wanted it to be quite long with a load of shorter tracks (as well as some 'traditional' length songs too). I'm talking that the shortest tracks will be perhaps only 40 seconds long, 'musical idea's type thing. I don't have any 'skits' per se, but maybe i will by the end.

There are tracks that consist of 2 actual pieces of music that flow from one into another, and are actually going to be considered 'one track' as it flips from a more laid back piece of music to a loud/abrasive piece of music (or vice versa).

How does that figure into the idea of paying for mastering? Someone could get around the 'x per track' by making it 10 songs long when really there are 18 real 'tracks' on there.

If i had, say 18 tracks but really have them as 13 CD tracks (because they are joined together), would people do a deal (perhaps you would do one anyway for that many tracks?), charge for 18 tracks, etc?

The reason i ask is because the mastering costs are possibly prohibitive of the creative process and i need to know what kind of money we need to gather and work towards that, or if i need to scale things down, etc.

Thanks for any info you can give on the particular way you work. It's not a traditional album with 12 x 3-5 minute songs or whatever.

Sorry if my question isn't clear.

Eddie

P.S - I'm not shopping for work here or asking for a deal, the project isn't finished, i was just curious so that i know what i need to do.