How to: Showcase Compositions on Soundcloud - 10/14/12 07:29 AM
Soundcloud is an easy-to-use audio hosting website. They offer a free service that seems to suit the needs of many members of PG Music's "Showcase Forum" community and allows users to showcase their original BIAB and RB compositions.
I've put the below guide together for those who would like to share their musical creations with others but are not sure how to go about making music available online.
When I upload, I usually use mp3 or wma formats. Fortunately, Realband can save songs in these formats. This makes it a good program to use to prepare a song for uploading.
It's worth noting that Soundcloud will re-compress audio. Thus by uploading in lossless formats such as WAV or FLAC, the quality of the final Soundcloud file will be optimized. These file formats are much larger, though, and will take noticeably longer to upload.
1. When the song is mixed, click on "Audio" and then select "Merge VSTi/DXi tracks to WMA file ..." (I've highlighted this in the image below.)
2. When the 'Save As' box pops up, navigate to the folder where the song is to be saved.
3. The tracks will then merge and, after a few seconds, the below box will pop up.
4. Click on the drop-down arrow I've highlighted in the above picture and then select the option I have also highlighted ("Better than CD quality (Stereo 128 Kbps, 11:1 946 KB/min")
5. Click on "Encode WAV to WMA" at the bottom of the pop-up window. Depending on the computer's speed, it could take around a minute to do this.
I've put the below guide together for those who would like to share their musical creations with others but are not sure how to go about making music available online.
When I upload, I usually use mp3 or wma formats. Fortunately, Realband can save songs in these formats. This makes it a good program to use to prepare a song for uploading.
It's worth noting that Soundcloud will re-compress audio. Thus by uploading in lossless formats such as WAV or FLAC, the quality of the final Soundcloud file will be optimized. These file formats are much larger, though, and will take noticeably longer to upload.
- How to do it ... Since my favorite is WMA format (that's the same format as Realtracks), I'll explain how to save a Realband arrangement in WMA format and then upload it to Soundcloud.
1. When the song is mixed, click on "Audio" and then select "Merge VSTi/DXi tracks to WMA file ..." (I've highlighted this in the image below.)
2. When the 'Save As' box pops up, navigate to the folder where the song is to be saved.
3. The tracks will then merge and, after a few seconds, the below box will pop up.
4. Click on the drop-down arrow I've highlighted in the above picture and then select the option I have also highlighted ("Better than CD quality (Stereo 128 Kbps, 11:1 946 KB/min")
5. Click on "Encode WAV to WMA" at the bottom of the pop-up window. Depending on the computer's speed, it could take around a minute to do this.
- Ok ... now the file is made for Soundcloud and ready to go. Got to http://soundcloud.com[/LIST]
6. If you don't have a Soundcloud account, create one. After having logged in, click on "Dashboard" (highlighted in the picture below) and then click on the button called "Upload your track or record something" (also highlighted below).
7. Now click on "Choose Files" as highlighted below.
8. Using the window that pops up, navigate to the folder where the song file from Realband was saved.
9. Click on the file and select "Open" (at the bottom right corner of the window) and the file will begin uploading to Soundcloud.
10. When the "upload" and the "transcoding" are completed (as shown below) ...
11. ... scroll further down the webpage and select whether the file is to be private of public ...
12 ... now scroll down a bit further on the webpage and click "Save".- When you've done that, you'll be taken to a webpage that contains your track.
13. The URL for the webpage is a link to the song and it can now be copied and emailed to friends, etc.
14. If you want to view all the tracks you've uploaded at any time, simply click on the "You" option in Soundcloud and then select "Tracks".
Hope this is useful,
Noel