Certificate of Embodied Production™ (CEP)
The CEP ensures music fans can trust what they hear, because it verifies how the recording was made. No grid correction. No pitch correction. No generative AI.
Pilot program. Certification mark application pending.
How It Works
Record without grid correction, pitch correction, or generative AI: The CEP is process-based. It verifies how the recording was made, not how it sounds.
Document your session: We provide simple documentation guidelines so you can show your process meets the standard.
Submit for review: We evaluate the production process against our CEP standard apply the same standard to every recording.
Get certified: Your listeners can verify that what they're hearing is what actually happened. You receive a CEP ID, mark assets, and a public registry listing they can check for themselves.
What The CEP Verifies
The CEP verifies that a recording’s musical timing and expressive decisions were preserved as performed, without post-production techniques that overwrite the performance.
To qualify, the production must meet these core requirements:
Standards for Certification
No grid-based timing correction (quantizing, Beat Detective, aligning hits to the grid after the fact)
No pitch correction (Auto-Tune, Melodyne, or comparable tools on vocals or instruments)
No generative AI used for musical content (melody, harmony, lyrics) or for performance synthesis
No editing practices that collapse the temporal integrity of the performance
No “infinite undo” workflow where decisions are endlessly revised instead of committed
The CEP does not evaluate artistic quality, genre, or commercial merit. It verifies defined aspects of the recording process only.
What The CEP Allows
CEP is not anti-technology.
It does not require a “live-to-two-track” philosophy. The following are compatible with the CEP, as long as the core requirements above are met:
Multitrack recording and overdubbing on any medium
Punch-ins are allowed and encouraged. Comping (swapping sections from multiple takes) is not
EQ, compression, reverb, delay, saturation, and other effects
Mixing, mastering, and standard delivery formats
Editing for cleanup that does not alter timing and pitch in a corrective way