ABOUT WORKBENCH RECORDINGS

Welcome to Workbench Recordings: a New York City netlabel specializing in unusual and experimental music. Tracks are posted on the last Tuesday of the month, with texts and graphic art, and are available as mp3s, and occasionally FLAC files, for free download.(FLAC files from WBR 03 to WBR 27 are available for purchase through indietorrent.org.)

ABOUT JAMES BEAUDREAU

Beaudreau is a musician, producer, and graphic artist in NYC. His main instrument is guitar, but he also plays bass and some drums. The first recording Beaudreau played on was The Billy Nayer Show's 1998 CD The Villian That Love Built. Beaudreau recorded two more albums with BNS (Return To Brigadoon and Goodbye Straplight Sarentino, I Will Miss You) and the soundtrack to the movie The American Astronaut, while periodically playing venues across the U.S. with the group. James then released the solo guitar album Java St. Bagatelles on Workbench in 2006, then the multi-instrumental Fresh Twigs in 2008. His third album, Astral Law, was released serially on Workbench Recordings. Download Astral Law here.

DEMO POLICY & SUMBISSIONS

Workbench Recordings does accept demos -- of a sort. If you'd like to have your music considered for release on WBR, send James Beaudreau an email with a link to the track(s); for example, to a MySpace page. Please do not attach mp3s to an email. Everyone who submits music for consideration will get an email back. (Writers and artists interested in contributing to the site should email too!)

ABOUT OUR PARTNERS

Masterdisk: Workbench Recordings releases starting with WBR 20 (January 2010) are mastered by Scott Hull at Masterdisk, one of the world's great mastering studios since 1973. In March 2010 James Beaudreau joined Masterdisk as their Director of Marketing.

indieTorrent: FLAC files for releases WBR 03 through WBR 27 are available for purchase through indieTorrent.org, a digital music marketplace that distributes pure, original-quality audio files in the patent-free FLAC format. indieTorrent's rock-solid e-commerce platform is safe, secure, and licensed to do business on a global scale. Unlimited re-downloads, no DRM, print-quality cover art, and a wealth of additional features make indietorrent.org revolutionary in purpose and scope. Visit them here.

PayPal: Workbench Recordings products are shipped from our New York office, but all financial transactions are handled by PayPal, through the PayPal shopping cart on our Buy Workbench page. Visit the PayPal website for information on their services.

ABOUT FLAC FILES

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player (or your car or home stereo) just like you would an MP3 file. (This text taken from the FLAC website). You can read about FLAC in great detail there.

Playing FLAC Files: iTunes currently does not support FLAC, but there are programs that do. A particularly good one is Songbird, which is a free program that's easy to install and use on Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms. It does pretty much everything iTunes does, and it has those awesome bird graphics too!

You can also convert FLAC files to a file type of your choice, such as Apple Lossless (m4a), or a high quality mp3. Or convert a FLAC file to AIF file or WAV file and burn a CD. There are many free programs that will convert files. These are two that we use: Max, and xACT (mac only).

ABOUT OUR MP3 FILES

The first mp3s posted on Workbench Recordings were encoded at 192 kbps. As of 2010 the mp3s are encoded at 256 kbps (VBR).

To download an mp3, right-click the "download free mp3" button below the song player (under the artwork) and choose "save link as" or "save file as" (however the browser you're using puts it).

ABOUT TRACK ART

The art that accompanies each track on Workbench Recordings appears on the page at a size of 360 x 360 pixels. A larger version (usually 1500 x 1500 pixels) is included with the purchase of a FLAC file from indietorrent.org. The size of the original is shown in the credit just under the artwork. Unless otherwise specified, the cover art is by James Beaudreau.

ABOUT CATALOG NUMBERS

Each track on Workbench Recordings has its own catalog number to make the chronology of the releases easier to manage. The first catalog number published on the site is "At the Foothills" from Astral Law (WBR 04). Earlier releases are Java St. Bagatelles (WBR 01), Fresh Twigs (WBR 02) and the Philip Lynch EP Four Songs (WBR 03).