This article was featured on Weezer.com!
What you see below isn't the new Weezer album, no wait, maybe it is -- well kinda. In this article, I will show you a great way to have some fun on your Mac and you'll have a professional looking and sounding Weezer album to show your friends that only took a short time to make and they won't believe you did it. To top it off, this is all legal.
Let's start out with some background before we get started. First off, Weezer is a great band and has a killer web site. Not only that, they put the songs they are working on for their next album on it for FREE download. This way fans can critique the songs and tell the gang what songs rock and which ones don't. So the first thing to do is go here and get the new Weezer tunes!
As many of you know, your Mac comes with a ton of great software and much of it is light years ahead of anything on the PC. iTunes is one of those programs. For this project you'll need iTunes 3. It's a free download from Apple here.
After you download the MP3s drop them on the iTunes window and they will be installed into your iTunes music library. You can now delete the files you downloaded by dragging them to the Trash. Select all of the MP3s in the playlist window and press CMD+I. In the tag editor that pops up, change the band name and year and album name accordingly. This is for the CD Jewel Case Insert we are going to make later on. When you are done, you should have something like the image above.
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For the next step, you just need to listen to the tunes! As you listen, click the my rating column and you can adjust the stars to rate each song. This way, your CD will only have the Weezer tracks you like. When you are done, click the My Rating at the top of the column to sort the MP3s by rating. You should have all of your favs at the top like in this picture. |
Next we click the plus button on the bottom left of the iTunes window. This is add playlist button. Name your new playlist Weezer or the like. Now drag your sorted MP3s over to the playlist -- make sure you only drag the ones you like. Click on the playlist and then stick a blank CD in your burner. Press the burn button! Your CD is being recorded!
This next step requires you to have AppleWorks 6 installed. If you have it, we can make a CD jewel case insert with a single click. Start AppleWorks and choose the CD Layout tab and pick one you like. Now from the scripts menu in iTunes, choose Build CD Tray Insert. This will put all the track names and times on the insert in AppleWorks. If you need the scripts they can be downloaded here. You then print the insert on thick paper and cut it out or use the jewel case inserts by Avery or CD Stomper. You should end up with a CD like the ones below.
A trickier part, and exercise left to the reader, is the CD label. Get some CD Stomper labels and start up Photoshop and do some experimenting. The package should have templates to help you out. It just takes a little practice to get cool results for your CDs. If that's too much for you, get some color sharpies and do it the old fashioned way -- draw!
Proving that downloading music doesn't stop people from buying CDs, here is our Weezer 5.0 CD-R with store bought copies of all four released Weezer albums. Weezer knows this too, that's why you can get the music on their web site. I'll be buying the fifth disc when it's released, cause I know it's good -- I listened to it while they made it and helped make it better! Hopefully you will too! Have fun on your Mac!
-Sean Rose (srose at cycline3 d o t com) has degrees in computer programming and media arts and has been a computer user since 1981 and currently writes commercial software for Macintosh and Windows computers.
I am an american artist.
Thank you for spending your time and hard earned money with me, here and in the real world. You can contact me, hire me, read about me or just check out my jeep.
