Thoughts on the Music Process

Hello,

Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking on the process of music in a general. Most modern independent musicians and composers do 90% of the music process themselves.

That is to say that all of the things that used to be delegated to separate people is now all being done by one person.

1. Composition (songwriting)
2. Orchestrating (Arranging)
3. Recording
4. Performing on the Recording (midi or otherwise)
5. Producing
6. Editing
7. Mixing
8. Mastering

That's just the tip of the ice berg. However as you can see one person is now expected to be capable of doing the jobs normally designed for 8 separate people.

As such the whole process can sometimes jumble up into a huge mess that in actuality slows the whole process.

It turns out to be a better process to take each step in order and not move on until you have each step finished.

In the example of a one man band; the best way to go about creating an album for that person in the fastest and smoothest way possible is to do the songwriting for the entire album before you do anything else.

This means that if you read music; you would write lyrics, find chords, and then set up a lead sheet with the basic melodies for each section of each song before you move on to arranging.

From there you would take each song and write out scores arranging the lead sheet from earlier into several instruments. Again you would do this before moving onto other phases.

To save time I would just mention that you finish out the list from above in the same exact manner.

The first advantage to this method is a constant gauge of your progress in the project.

It's much easier than saying; "Welllll I have 6 songs started but nothing finished."

I've fallen into that trap more times than I can count.

The second huge advantage is a consistant sound throughout the project.

Can you imagine doing the process by song. You would do all the above for one song. Let's say it takes a couple of weeks. Well by the time you get to the second song and get to the mastering phase for that song it's going to have a completely different sound due to the change in several factors by the time you get to that song.

Doing it this way will get you to the point where you can have a consistant and smooth project both sonically and chronically.

Now I won't get into the debate as to whether you should have someone else do the mastering or doing it yourself.

I'm not backed by a record label, and I fund all my projects myself. As such, I choose to do my own mastering. It's my choice based on my current needs. If you feel you need to have another group do your mastering (or any phase of the project for that matter) that's up to you. But I'm rather stubborn and I have a specific sound in mind when I start and it drives me nuts when it doesn't sound like I wanted when I'm done. In my case the only person I can blame for those problems is myself.

As such I feel that this method will not only work for my future projects but my primary musical theme "SuccoLamia" will benefit from the change in work method.

You see before when I would do SuccoLamia material I would come at it from a sound design perspective. I think coming at a non traditional concept from a traditional standpoint will make everything more concise even though I'm working on a multi genre project with a single theme.

As always I hope the things I've written in this blog help you with your musical works.

Hello Again!

Hello folks!

I'm re-publishing my songwriting and composing blog. However instead of just talking about songs that I have written or treating this as a sort of diary; I am also going to be linking to files that I have written for licensing opportunities and just songs in general to show examples of what I am talking about in my blogs.

Of course this week I have a couple of files to share with you.

http://audiojungle.net/item/somber-indecision/1681828

This first piece is a piano solo composed nearly on a whim after seeing a really somber movie hence the title "Somber Indecision"

The second is more of an agressive Trailer Score type piece.
http://audiojungle.net/item/it-was-a-firefight/1609084

These are both up for license on Audio Jungle if you would like to use them they are royalty free!