Song Process

Page status: Draft

Created:	Aug 2026
Reviewed:	-
To do:	Mostly everything. Priority: put links to detail pages in first.

The overall approach isn't fixed ... as an independent artist, one of the upsides of doing everything is being able to flit between tasks as required. In practice, I've found that focussing on a specific stage has a couple of benefits:

ability to involve others: it demarcates who does what, helping to avoid any toe treading;
it uses your energy efficiently: if you're creating yet spend your time tweaking the snare sound, you won't progress your creations as quickly and will run out of steam in the session. Chances are the snare will need revisiting too once the song is fleshed out.

From my perspective, the style of song we're looking at requires a DAW. You can record using external synths and mic'd cabs but we're not going to major on this way of creating.

Indeed, you don't need a DAW for many styles but the mixing stages might still be relevant.

Regardless, we go through the DAW Setup as a pre-requisite to the latter stages. We'll look at some DAW fundamentals, the software & hardware setup, think about templates and consider a workflow.

There are an extremely wide number of ways to create, even with the constraints of a DAW based process. We'll consider aspects of Collaboration, Sound Design, songwriting and recording as part of the creation stage.

Once the main components of a song are in place, we consider how they're put together and the transitions between them.

We'll consider formal verse-chorus-middle 8 type structures, looser through-composed styles, the variations between iterations and transitional shifts between them under Arranging and how they can be applied in the DAW.

We'll consider high level approaches to help align the mix with song's intent, the use of a 3d model, the use of busses and effects and automation as part if the mixing stage.

We'll help define how mixing and mastering are distinguished, then look at the technicalities of Mastering, especially identifying others who'll help us perform this.

Once your track's written, captured, polished and prepared, you can consider what to do with it, indie style outside of the DAW. Where to post your songs, where not to post, whether and how to promote, more thoughts on Fediverse and Big Tech.