Composing: Composing is the creation of a song/initial idea. The composition of a song can start with an initial riff, chord progression or a beat. Solo artist may not write the songs themselves, they may have songwriter that is hired by the record company to write the songs for them, they will work with the music producer to create a track for the lyrics to go with; this mean two different copyrights need to be made. In all of the copyright in music, the lyrics and the music have separate copyright. If the band writes the song the band must have all of their work in writing, but the band can be contracted to have the songs copyrighted to the record company. Musicians can be hired by a record company to play on one of their artist tracks, they will be contracted to play for record company. Every artist that plays on the tracks will make money from the tracks sales, but some may just get paid a curtain amount per track, but a lot of the time the contributing artist will not get full credit for their work on the song.
The songs need to be rehearsed to a quality that the artist and record company are happy with, the song can properly arranged during the rehearsal stage. After this the song is ready to gigged or played out online on social networking sites and/or on the band or artists website if they have one, then people can comment on the song and give your song some feed back. It is important to get feedback on your material, this way you can tell if the song is going to be popular and make as may sales as possible to make as much money off the song as possible, also it gives you a look at weather the song is good as it could be.
Pre-Production Demo: Before releasing a full recording you want to create a demo of the song, doing this will allow you to be able get rid of any problems you have with the current state of the song: you can sort out timing issues, you can also decide to add things to the song like overdubs and effects that would sound great on the official recording. The demo is an overall look at the track to see what can be done with the song before going in to the studio to record.
Recording: Recording a single has many steps: first step is deciding how the track is going to be recorded, and how you’re going to achieve the sound that you are looking for. The recording engineer will know exactly what equipment to use to get the desired sound. The whole process is overseen by the producer, but sometimes the producer is sometimes the recording engineer. A producer has a lot roles
like, thinking ideas for the track, helping artists and musicians in the
studio, leading recording sessions, they’re also supervise the mixing and mastering process. Some
things that can be done after recording the basis of the song; you can overdub
some guitar parts to strengthen areas of the song; you can also double track
some parts of the song to give it a thicker sound. To get the right sound the
engineer can use lots of different microphones and effects like reverb and
delay and using EQ to get a much fuller sound. An example of a recording
engineer is Andrew Jackson who worked with the band Pink Floyd in the
production of the track ‘The Wall’.
Mixing: Mixing is a very hard skill to master, Mixing engineer takes the raw
signal and balances the volume levels on all of the tracks so that you can hear
all aspects of the track. The mix engineer will also use effects like EQ,
reverb, delay, compression they may also use some less common effects like a
flanger to get a full, and solid sound for the band or artist. The mix engineer
may also use automation to give the song some dynamics to help keep the
listener interested. Chris Lord-Alge is a mix engineer who has worked on the
tracks: Green Day – Nimrod, American Idiot, 21st Century Breakdown and Awesome As Fuck, My Chemical Romance – The Black Parade and Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous
Killjoys, Slipknot –Dead Memories and Sulfur, and many more.
Mastering: The mastering engineer is the final step in the process of creating a
track, the mastering engineer will be the last one to work on the song, and
they will make sure that the track is ready for release. They will use many
effects to make sure the track is at its best quality, by compressing it,
sorting out any kinks in the EQ and enhancing the overall sound of the finished
product.
