The Music Production Workflow
It’s always good to keep the bigger picture in mind when it comes to music production. We wouldn’t want to get too lost in the weeds of mixing music, for example, if we didn’t already have a great song written and ready to mix in the first place. This post is part one of a two-part series; here’s part two.
As refresher, here’s what the complete music production workflow looks like:
Pretty amazing that this entire process is happening across tens of thousands of songs being released, every single day.
My recommendation? Focus on just one step at a time, there’s no rush, but try to take the complete process all the way through from start to finish, without getting stuck.
Sketches first, then demos, then studio stuff, then release. Rinse and repeat, and build up that body of high quality original work slowly over time.
It’s good to focus on getting just one project at a time completed and released, versus juggling many projects but never completing any. A bunch of different projects stuck halfway through the process is a recipe for frustration.
If you’re getting stuck in the writing phase:
I’d suggest picking just one or two of your very best songs on which to complete the entire workflow. You could spend the rest of your life collecting half-finished songs on a hard drive. And, it’s perfectly ok if you want to do that!
You should only release music that you’re really proud of. But, also remember: artists do release work of some kind, regularly. At some point, if you want to be an artist, you really do need to put out something. How much you put out, and when, is completely up to you. Try to find a balance.
If you’re getting stuck in the production phase
If you’ve been stuck in active music production for months or years at a time, consider switching out your production help. Part of the job of any production pro is helping you finish the process in a reasonable amount of time.
If the production pro is you, and you just can’t seem to finish that mix you’ve been fiddling with for months, you might need to switch yourself out! In that case, I’d suggest finding some cool collaborators on the technical side: ones that you trust.
If trying to do every single little thing on your own is getting in the way of you releasing work, it might be time to change it up.
If you’re getting stuck in the release phase:
Your release doesn’t need to be a complicated affair. But, also manage your expectations: the simpler your release, the more likely your music won’t be heard by many people. As long as that’s ok with you, great!
Many musicians are very happy doing simple Bandcamp-only releases with minimal promotion. And, they don’t really care about listen counts or any of that stuff. Awesome!
Here’s a quick and easy way of completing the release phase of the workflow. If you’re stuck on releasing your music, just do this:
Upload to Bandcamp/Spotify
Don’t do any promotion at all
You’re done! Your music has now been released, on to the next one.
As long as you don’t expect to just blow up using a very simple release strategy like this, all good. We only get into release frustrations when our expectations don’t match reality.
The more quality time and attention you give to the release side, the better the shot at gaining lasting traction. So, when/if you’re ready for doing that, you can choose to go down that road. Or not. Not every release you do has to be some big thing.
Just the ones you want to actually get listened to, by anyone other than your five closest friends.
There’s lots of ways to be creative with the releasing of your work, so have fun with it! For some ideas, here’s a case study detailing the release strategy of an indie artist with over 100 million streams on their songs.
Getting started with musical releases
You might try doing all of this on a single song first, as opposed to an entire album of music. Lots of rap artists do this to great success in their early careers. It’s much more affordable to produce amazing singles, so a lot of people can afford to do them properly, at really high quality.
Which is better: a couple great singles out there that you’re really super proud of, or a full album that’s kinda meh cause it wasn’t done quite right?
Ideally, it’s everything: great albums, great EPs, and great singles, all together. But, it takes time to build up a body of work like that. Starting out, if you can only afford to pick one of these things, I’m going with less songs done at higher quality, every time.
There’s also much less chance of you burning out before you break through, going with the single-first route.
