Those of you reading my blog will of read yesterday on my Tips For Upgrading Your Imported CDs on iTunes so today I’m going to bring you some more iTunes tips on adding your CDs to iTunes music, simple enough to do, but what if you want to control how iTunes records your CDs and what format they are when they have been added to iTunes.

Ok, load up your iTunes and select preferences “Edit>Preferences” now you want to be in the general tab, you want to edit the settings to to be the same as those in the picture below:

This is to tell iTunes that you want to view the CD contents before you add it to iTunes, very helpful if you only want certain tracks and not the whole album. Now you have that set, click the “Import Settings” button, this will now upon up a window for the recording quality.

There are several formats you can record in AAC, AIFF, Apple Lossless, MP3 and WAV. I’m going to choose AAC which is the standard on iTunes, so just click on the “Import Using” box to select your chosen format for CD ripping!

Now we have chosen that, click on setting and select “Custom” this will now open the window for setting your custom settings, I have an iPod classic, so I have the room to produce bigger files for the music so I use a VBR (Variable Bit Rate) which is what the iTunes store now also uses.

If you use the same settings I have above then you recording sound pretty good, obviously you can play around with the settings, but, I’ve found these to give a good recording while not having a file that is too big.

So after confirming these settings all you have to do is insert your CD and view the contents, decide if you want the whole album or just certain tracks and then hit the “Import CD” button, if you are upgrading tracks then you will see a warning asking if you want to replace the files, click “Replace Existing” and off it goes.

That’s about it really, it’s that simple.

Thanks for reading

Now this little tip is useful to those of you who may have had an iPod with a smaller capacity before upgrading to one with a much better one, such as an iPod Nano to an iPod Classic.

I found that when I originally upgraded to a bigger iPod I found that I had all my imported CDs recorded at 128kbps which is probably fine for most people, but I can certainly here the difference when a CD is imported with a setting of 256kbps and VBR (Variable Bit Rate), but what if you have already imported some of your CDs at a higher rate, how do you find out which ones are in a lower setting?

Those of you who do know of my projects and some of the blogs that I write, will know about my blog for my electronica music project with my friend JJ under the name of Remergence.

To date we have released a stack of albums and singles, some of which can be found on iTunes and other good online stores, but as JJ posted on our official blog the other day in the post “Helping with the Haiti Relief” we are donating sales from our albums, tracks and singles that are purchased via our BandCamp Store.

So please help by stopping by and downloading as much or as little as you can, so we can proudly say that our fans have helped by donating to the Haiti Relief.

Those of you who read this blog, may of noticed that I recently posted about a website called Twubs and that I had started a group there for the BloggingWire hashtag.

I also have one which is purely just for fun and is for use with a hashtag I have set up for Alternative Song Titles (#AltSongTitle), it all just for a laugh really you come up with a song title and change it slightly, check out the AltSongTitle Twub for some examples of the ones that I have already done.

So if you have a bit of spare tweeting time on your hands stop by the Twub and join up and then start tweeting your alternative song titles, my aim is to get as many people as Twub Members using this hashtag as possible so if each of you join in with the fun, you never know we could just possibly become a popular hashtag on Twitter, now wouldn’t that be cool

Well someone has to do it

Now those of you that know me from Blazing Minds will now that I have been posting an article called “Who’s The Band” this is where I have interviewed a band and posted it on my trusty blog, it’s a way for up and coming bands and even well known bands to get a bit more of the limelight, so If you are into music and would like to hear something new then please take the time to visit the Blazing Minds Who’s The Band articles and enjoy!

Also since 1997 I ‘ve been producing music myself under the name Remergence it’s electronica music, but don’t let that put you off, which I enjoy doing and since starting have many releases on iTunes as well as other popular websites including Amazon, recently I was lucky enough to be signed to the record label EML Recordings so the next album will be released under them, so now is the time to get your hands on some of my releases, some which you can get cheaper on the Remergence BandCamp Store, so please find the time to grab a couple of tracks or albums from the sites around the internet.

You can find out more from the Official Remergence Website and the Electronica Music Blog.

Thanks everyone