Making Music Is Not That Hard, Is It?

Posted by Asad Shehzad on February 3rd, 2020

Have you ever wanted to learn how to create a song? You can create something good enough so you can show your friends and family. If you can play guitar, sing, know music theory, now how to use MIDI and own a digital audio workstation, also known as a DAW, you can make and produce music.

The Basic Steps For Creating A Song From Scratch

The unwritten stages of music production are writing, arranging, audio recording, mixing/producing and mastering. One of the hardest stages is the mixing and mastering of the song you just created. I suggest after you have written and arranged the song, you send it off to an online mixing and mastering studio. But with that said, its great fun and good experience to do those two things yourself. It’s a good thing to say that you produced an entire song from start to finish.

The writing of the song should come form your hear. You can draw form past experiences or from something you have witnessed. Just as long as it feels like it’s true and not fake. When you write a song, you should have an idea of how you want the lyrics to sound. You do not want to write a verse part with instruments that may interfere with the vocals. That is the tricky part and one of the most under looked parts of producing a song. You have to keep in mind not to mask the vocals with instruments cluttering up the frequency field.

The recording stage can often co-exist with the writing stage. This means that some people often write and record at the same time. An example is that they record the drums without having a clue to how the bass guitar will sound and what notes the bass will actually play. They are in sense creating as they go. A lot of music producers create songs this way as there are no rules on how to create original music. You can do anything you feel like doing. The only thing that matters is that it sounds good in the end of all the stages of production. I went off topic a little bit, but the recording part is where you take your sounds that you created and put them onto a medium that can recall it back at any time, lie a digital audio workstation or analog tape.

The mixing of the song starts as soon as you are done recording. But some music producers like to mix as they record and some like to start the mixing process when every single track has been recorded. In mixing you want to set and adjust the levels of the instruments in a certain way that makes the mix sound the way you have envisioned it in your head. You can also add effects and insert bus's to put your audio effects on. Mixing can also involve using automation to control gain levels, effect settings and the panning of the instruments in the stereo field. There are a lot of different tools and processes you can do in the mixing stage. It is actually unlimited and your only drawback can be your lack of imagination. Do not be afraid of doing things and experimenting to see how something comes out. In a DAW, you always have the option to undo what you have done. I love how DAW's are non-destructive. It has really opened up the things you can try and the things you can put into the mix without being scared of ruining it.

When the mixing is done, it is time to master it. So many producers are hesitant to try and master their own mixes and they are correct in feeling that way. You actually should never master your own mixes. There are so many things that can go wrong and you are way too close to the mix to actually have a neutral perspective on how to go about mastering it. Being too close to your mix is not a bad thing, unless you are mastering it also. It’s not a good practice to mix your song and master your song in the same place. For one, you will not hear any deficiencies in that mix because of the room. This is because you are doing both processes in the same room and if that room has a null, peaks and buildups in certain frequency ranges, your mixes and masters will over compensate or under compensate for those peaks and nulls. This enough should be a determinant to do those two things in the same room.

Marketing Of Your Music

After you created something majestic and beautiful. Now it’s time to share it with everyone. But how can you do that? No one is going to know about your music, if you do not tell them know about it. Do you actually think they will just get an unknown urge to go to your website or look up your name on Spotify and then click on your music, No way Jose! No one is going to know your music is out there on the web, unless someone tells them about it.

You thought making the music was the hard part, Nope! Marketing the music is the hardest part and it’s the part that most everyone fails at. No one is magically going to find you on iTunes or go to your website. They need to be led there. Keep in mind, they will only be led there is your music is good enough for people to have an interest in it. You can market your song to perfection, but if your music is not actually interesting and good, no one will listen to it and no one will tell their friends about it. You need to create something that people will want to share and listen to day after day. If you cannot do that, than marketing will not help you. Sometimes the truth hurts, but the music business is not for everyone. You need to have skin of great thickness to be in this business.