How to Finish Your Songs: Stages of Music Creation

Being a home studio recording artist, you know that you have to fill many hats in the music creation process. But sometimes music creation can be a daunting task...

Especially if you have to be your own artist, producer, and engineer.

Being independent however doesn’t mean doing it all yourself. You should at least hire a dedicated engineer for the more technical final stages of your music, that way you can focus on the more creative aspect. But I definitely understand if budget plays a big factor.

All professional songs follow a formula for music creation, and each step of this formula requires a different set of ears and brains to ensure the success of a song. I’m talking from the actual hands that touch the song down to the studio personnel that simply record the notes of a studio session.

Fun Fact: According to BBC, Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk” had a total of 13 people just to help write the song!

#1 - The Production Stage

The production stage is the most crucial part of your song. This is a stage where you do your most creative aspects of the record. This is also where you will spend your most time getting everything right. Get everything right in this stage, and the rest of the chain flows very smoothly.

Production for me is broken down into four elements.

The Composition

Composition is the actual production: The instruments, the melodies, the drums, and so forth. This is where you would call on a producer to make the beat for you, or you’re making it yourself. Sound design of synths, guitars and guitar players, drums and 808s, the song tempo, the counter melodies, whatever are meticulously selected and crafted to express the feel of the song.

It doesn’t have to be big ideas and even a full track, because we need to make sure the next part can fit in snuggly.

The Lyrics

Lyrics - although we are moving more towards music where we vibe to more the beat - are still a very important part of the process. A great way to ruin a song is to have bad, uncatchy lyrics. You should write lyrics that convey the emotion you are trying to express, regardless of the emotion. This is what makes your song stand out.

To me, A perfect balance in rap of a fire modern trap beat and powerful lyrics has to be Kendrick Lamar’s “N95” song. It’s a catchy hook, the beat is fire, and the lyrics have substance.

Tracking & Vocal Performance

Great lyrics set you up for the ABSOLUTE most important piece of the song: How you record your vocals and the VOCAL PERFORMANCE.

I can’t stress that bad vocal performances and improper recording takes are two REALLY BIG things that a mix cannot fix.

You know how they say the camera adds 10 pounds? Being behind a mic makes you 10X flatter. When people hear your song they can’t see your emotions, so you have to over exert your expressions through your voice to bring the lyrics out. You basically have to be a voice actor on the song. They care about those cracks in your voice when you feel choked up. Smiling while singing comes across as more excited singing.

Also, if you’re not recording properly (too close or far from the mic, signal too loud, chains jingling- yes tracking engineers would prefer you didn’t do that, noises in the background), it is going to be extremely hard to fix that.

Altogether each of these parts should take at least 2hours to a single day to get right. Again, no amount of mixing and mastering makes a flat performance sound like a masterpiece.

Arrangement & Editing

At this part of the production, this is where you make everything you did all come together. This is the proofreading before moving to the next stage.

In life, it’s very hard to focus on many different elements at once. If everything is important, then nothing is. The same thing happens to a poorly arranged song. How can you understand the importance of that beautiful counter melody part if it’s there are the time

In rap, the main things that should be consistent are the melody, bass, drums, and vocals. But even then, taking them out at specific parts can help add to the feel of your song.

Editing vocals are also a vital part of the creation process. In this part, you should be treating your vocals so that they become mix ready. These are things like adding pitch correction, taking out or reducing breaths and noise, making sure the timing is correct, and I’d even go as far as to say making sure the vocals are consistently leveled.

A new powerful technique is vocal comping. This is where you record multiple takes then pick the best versions of each part of the phrase or word to create a “super take”. It’s a more advanced-ish approach and takes more time to record, but it eliminates having to get it right in one take. This also works if you’re recording instruments too.

If you are a part of your own mixing process, I would wait at least one day after editing and arrangement to get fresh ears for your mix.

Take care of this part, and you won't have to worry about spending hours fighting yourself in the next stage...

#2 The Post Production Stage

As we move further into the elements of creation, we start to get more technical with our music. This process requires a different part of your brain that you cannot fully focus on if you are jumping back and forth. So we need to turn our creative side off and focus on bringing out the best of the elements we’ve decided to arrange and edit. Post production has two essential processes.

Mixing

The purpose of mixing is essentially balancing the instruments of a beat with the vocals, bringing out the emotions of the record with time-based and creative effects, and providing the end listener with an overall positive emotional experience (even if it’s a sad record.) You don’t want everything to just sound like a collection of instruments and vocals.

Mixing uses many creative techniques to achieve this result, but it is still a very technical process. As you mix you should be asking yourself how can I enhance what lies before me? Having a direction along with exceptional knowledge in the tools and many different decision making techniques allows you to mix your song according to plan and give a 3D-type, professional sounding, awe-inspiring record.

Again, a great mix comes from a heavily well-produced production. A poorly recorded song with subpar lyrics and improper technique does NOT make a great mix.

Mastering

Mastering is perceived as making the track as loud as possible before releasing. But many streaming services are moving towards a more dynamic listening experience. There's a certain limit to loudness before they artificially compress your music to fit guidelines. Believe me, it doesn't sound pretty.

My goal is to display the mastering engineers as more than just the loudness guys.

Mastering actually is the last process of reinforcing the important elements the song and making the final song ready for release. It is the quality control if you will. Sure, these guys use tools like EQ, compression, and limiting to do this, and it does get loud, but the process is vastly different from that of a mixing engineer. It fact, it the most technical process of making a song.

First off, whereas mixing is more about balancing 10s or hundreds of tracks, mastering focuses on the final 2-track stereo mix. I encourage you to get your mix as perfect as perfect can be, take off any effects on the master track that don't contribute to the feel of your sound, and bounce your mix to a 32bit wav file.

Then, import the bounced track into a newly created session, and master from there. This way you’re getting into the habit of not being able to mix while you're mastering. Any problem in the mix means you have to go back to your mix and actively fix it from there, not on the master bus.

Mastering is also more about translation and coherence. Mastering engineers are responsible for making sure the final record plays back accurately on ALL sets of sound sources. They are also responsible for making sure all songs (if there’s a full project) are properly sequenced, have a consistent level between each song, and they make sure each song plays one after the other in a way the project intends.

Once you've mastered your record, you're ready for release! Bounce the mastered file to both a 24bit wav file and a 320kbps mp3 file for the next step.

Encoding and Formatting

Data like a song's name, artist name, product codes, album name, etc. is encoded into each song to distinguish it from other songs. The actual format of the song matters as well, especially if you are uploading to streaming platforms. You will need to know that Spotify accepts a 24bit high resolution wav file with a LUFS (average loudness) of -14. But some streaming aggregate companies may require only a 320kbps mp3 file.

Guess who’s job that is? Yep, the mastering engineer!

Why do you need to know this? Because compartmentalizing yourself in the different stages of music helps you move your songs forward.

Thanks for reading! If this helped you bring clarity to finishing your music faster, leave your comment below. Let me know also: what part of the music creation process do you struggle with?