Pt.2 Creating The Music – The Ultimate Guide to Creating Your First Release
By Daniel Nesci
It’s creation time! You’ve sorted the logistics of your release or at least started to plan the logistics and you need to make the heart and soul of any release which is the music. I’m going to be breaking down the general stages of creation for a new release. Obviously, there is no one correct way to make music but this is the workflow I’ve gravitated towards the most after being a part of a few different creation structures.
Initial writing
Sounds simple enough, but this stage can honestly be the most lengthy and arbitrary part of any new music. The toughest part about this stage is that you’re creating something fresh and new, you aren’t improving on anything like you will be in the following stages and in this phase you need to establish the early ideas, song structures and arrangements that you would feel comfortable going through with.
What aspect of the song you start with is totally up to you and your preferences/musical abilities. If I’m writing a song for a track including a vocalist I will always go straight to piano whereas if I’m writing an instrumental piece I tend to shift towards the guitar. In both instances I start with a series of phrases I like or a chord progression I think can be moulded into something more. Whatever works for you is the correct method and any methodology that can get you from no material to an entire release worth of quality written demos is a good methodology.
After establishing a collection of demo tracks you feel are going to constitute your release the next stage is recording and the final arrangements. Recording is a broad term and it encompasses numerous elements, from vocal recording to guitar tracking and can involve multiple trips to a proper studio or done out of your own home (I’ll be discussing the pros and cons of working with professionals in a future piece). This is the time where you improve on the demo writing. Having accurate final recordings gives a clearer picture of the song and allows for any structural changes to be made before production and mixing. To note – some demos may never make it through this stage, you may have a change of heart. This song written by another memeber of my band sat in an old digital folder for years before he felt ready to move forward with it.
If you’ve gotten through the initial writing and recording stage I can safely say that the majority of the work has been done and the better quality recording you have the easier this next stage is going to be.
Production and mixing
Production is another one of those areas that is genre dependent, if you’re working on metal music, reamping guitar tone is going to be a big part of it. If you’re working on pop it will differ, crafting the right vocal tone, sample layering and making the texture of the track as full as possible.
Mixing is then the balancing, EQ’ing, altering, correcting and essentially everything that can possibly be fine-tuned in order to have the highest quality sound. The best analogy I’ve ever heard for mixing is this, imagine each instrument is its own water pipe, mixing is the process of having all those pipes diverge into one without the new merged piped bursting, keeping everything balanced. Mixing is only as good as the recording though, keep that in mind, no matter who does the mixing a subpar recording effort will ruin any attempts at a high-quality mix. Some examples of high quality mixes/production:
Mastering
This one actually is fairly simple to wrap your head around and there isn’t a whole lot of feedback that goes on here because nothing major tends to change. Mastering ensures consistency of sound between multiple tracks on an album and preparing it for distribution through streaming sources and physical printing.
So that’s that. Writing, arranging, recording, mixing/production and mastering. Simplistic steps on paper but it will take a while to get through. If you aim to get your music to the highest quality you can at each individual stage when you progress through the levels it will gradually become easier until finally, you have a completed release! This is when the real work starts, having something great is only as good as how you go about sharing it.
Previous/Following Articles:
Pt.6 The Feedback Process
Pt.7 Release Cycles
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