Example Digital Audio Production Workflow

There's always room for jamming with other musicians anytime during this process. It might not contribute directly to the process, but it's fun and all parties will learn a lot from the synergy. This isn't the only process (feel free to add or subtract or repeat steps, according to your own process).

1. Songwriting. An instrument and a notebook would be helpful. A mini tape recorder/digital recorder to demo ideas might be helpful. The end product is basically lots of music with or without lyrics.

2. Arranging. This is where you try to make sense of the raw materials of music and lyrics, and put it in a nice little consumable package. You also decide which instruments will fit for the upcoming production.

3. Recording. Track drums, bass, guitars, keyboards, vocals, strings, brass, percussion, etc., according your arrangment. You can assemble an relatively large ensemble to perform live, with minimal overdubs, or you/a small band can build a song a few instruments at a time. If you are going to edit and mix later, you need to record multitrack - each instrument has its own input(s) or microphone(s).

4. Auditioning. Choose the good takes, and discard the bad takes. Punch in to quickly overdub fixes for decent takes.

5. Editing. This is where digital audio workstation recording begins to differ from traditional recording. You can easily compile the good parts of so-so takes to make a pretty spotless takes. Use this sparingly, as slight imperfections is human, and your human audience will better connect with emotional, human performances. Total perfection might lose the emotionality that makes a good recording.

6. Mixing. All the instruments that past muster must coexist. Make sure all that needs to be heard/felt is heard/felt.

7. Repeat the above steps for additional songs, if you are going to release more than a single, like an EP or a full-length album.

8. Mastering. Add that extra sheen to your track(s), make sure has the right dynamics (hopefully without playing into the loudness war), and have all your tracks (if more than one) work together as a collection - in sequence, and in equalization tonality.

9. Release to the world! You have your choice of media, from vinyl to CDs to MP3s and myriad ways to get your sonic creation to the ears (and hearts and minds) of as many people as possible! Cheers!

10. Repeat the process...

Loudness War (Recording)

Sometime during the late 1990s, I found that my CDs of circa pre-1996 albums were drastically quieter than the newer CDs I bought. This phenomenon still plagues me to this day, as I have to constantly shift the volume when I listen to my ripped mp3 collection when they are shuffled on iTunes. (I am lazy to tell iTunes to normalize the levels in my collection.)

Long story short, the record industry created a culture of louder + more compression = better, and so they mastered most mainstream CDs to be loud to the point of clipping (the uncool kind of distortion). The richness of loud-soft dynamics is usually lost when compressor effects are used heavily. Here's an interesting YouTube video that boils down the situation:

For more information, do a Google search on the loudness war or read the Wikipedia article (for starters). When you are recording, try to make things dynamic and give your tracks some headroom. When you get to the mastering process, that's when you have to choose sides in the loudness war.

Happy recording!

BIAS Repli-Q (Recording)

If you are not a master at the mastering process, nor a wiz at fiddling with EQ settings, BIAS Repli-Q can help. This plug-in, which can be purchased separately at bias-inc.com or part of the BIAS Master Perfection Suite, can literally take the EQ profile of an existing recording and allow you to place it on another recording/track. Of course, it isn't a miracle worker.

Repli-Q is best at tackling one instrument at a time. For instance, if you have an existing recording of a sweet-sounding solo piano, you can use Repli-Q to take that track's EQ profile. When you have a less-than-ideal EQ'd piano recording, you can insert the sweet sounding EQ for pretty good results. You can make the new recording have anywhere from 0% to 100% of another track's EQ. For mono/stereo single tracks, 50-100% will usually have good results.

You'll need to be more careful when you take the EQ profile from a multitrack, bounced stereo master (consisting of several instruments mixed together) and place that EQ onto another bounced stereo master. I'd say to hover around 25% to have noticeable similarities but not go overboard to the 50-100% range, as it will not have good results.

You can also throw away all the above suggestions regarding EQ profiles when you just want to experiment! Steal the EQ profile from a vocal track and paste it onto some bongos (and vice versa), and hear what happens! You might like the result, or you might just remove the plug-in from the track: The choice is yours!

Have fun recording, producing, mixing, and mastering!