When you’ve never been through it yourself, the song creation process can seem esoteric and complex – knowledge reserved only for those who are in the game. We’re here to lift the veil and give you a close look at every necessary step of song-making, from start (first ideas) to finish (post-release).
Everyone has a different creative process, so some of these steps may be carried out in an alternative order. Nevertheless, every songwriter and artist goes through them all at one point to ensure that their music is created at the highest level, and all i’s and t’s have been dotted and crossed.
1. Inspiration Strikes
What inspires a song can be quite literally anything – an interaction, a melody popping into your head, a poem you read, a story you heard – but it always starts with a small idea that you get curious about and know should be developed more. Some people are brought to the drawing board by external factors such as the ones mentioned above, while others start with intention and fiddle around on an instrument until they’ve found an idea worth pursuing. Either way, there is always an “ah” element that becomes the root of the song, and what feeds the other elements that follow.
The step that comes next depends on a person’s creative process or what inspiration pushed them to start making the song. The big creative debate is whether to start with music first or lyrics first. Most artists lean towards one or the other pretty consistently, but truthfully, everyone does a little bit of both. Elton John is known for writing his song lyrics first, and The Beatles’ hit “Get Back” started with the title. Most others start with a top line (lead melody) or chord progression to get the ball rolling. We’ll cover how both processes usually work.
2a. Start with Music
Most people find it easier to get the ideas flowing if they start with an instrumental. This could be something they pulled from YouTube, a loop they found on a sample website like Splice, a quick chord progression on an instrument, or something they produced themselves in a DAW. In all cases, the instrumental serves as the base of the song and gives the artist an idea of what tempo and key the lyrics and melody are going to be in.
If you are starting with an instrument, play around until you find a couple chords you like the sound of. If you pick 4 of them that sound good in succession, you’ve just created a chord progression and can record and loop it for when you want to start writing lyrics. If you’re starting in a DAW, pick an instrument or percussion sound to begin building your beat or plug in a MIDI instrument to test out chords that way. If you’re playing in MIDI, you can put down an initial idea and change the notes around in the program to test out things you may not be able to physically play.
2b. Start with Lyrics
Lyrics first doesn’t have to mean that the whole song is written out before getting to work on the music. It often means using one line or phrase and building out a verse or chorus from there. If you read a song’s lyrics without music, you’ll notice that it reads like a poem. Many artists journal or write poetry and take inspiration from their own past writing to inform their next song’s theme, rhyme scheme, or even exact lyrics. However you like best, write down a few words or lines and see if they tell you anything about what your song could be about. Continue telling the story from there. Knowing your song’s general theme early on will help you when you’re ready to add music to your lyrics.
| Read also: How to write good lyrics
3. Pair Them
The next step is to pair the music and lyrics. When a beat has preceded the lyrics, the easiest way forward is to listen to what you’ve come up with and start freestyling whatever words come to mind. Most artists will start with gibberish and put words on it later. The point here is to establish a kind of flow so you know where the words will sit within the rhythm. Singers usually kill two birds with one stone here by freestyle singing, which gives you both melody and lyric ideas. Record and keep everything you have and sort through it afterwards until you find something you like and can build around.
If you started with lyrics, think about the emotion your words are trying to convey and search for a melody or chord progression that sparks the same feeling. Utilizing emotion and mood will greatly speed up the process of choosing sounds and other production elements because you’ll know whether they resonate with the sentiment you’re going for right away. For rhythm and tempo, read your lyrics out loud and see if there’s anywhere you naturally hear a pause. This may help you figure out how long you want a bar to be.
4. Record
Once the base structure of the song is done and lyrics are more or less set in stone, it’s time to record. Some choose to record as they write, while others don’t get into the studio until the song is fully ready. To each their own! There is no right or wrong way about it.
The pairing of music and lyrics from the last section requires that at least one of the two has been recorded in some way, whether it’s in voice memos or directly in a DAW, so some of the recording process may already be done. When the writing process is complete, the artists who wrote their song at home with a notebook and instrument will go on to book studio time (or record at home if they have the equipment) to get a quality recording of the track. If they don’t know how to record themselves, which can be tedious in a full sized studio, they’ll have an engineer join the session to record them. Those who were working directly in a DAW (whether at home or in a studio with a producer) will have some good takes, some gibberish, and some throw away takes. Once the lyrics and melody have been decided on, they will go ahead and finalize the recordings and redo all the vocal takes until they’re happy with them.
5. Flesh Out the Song Production
This is the part in the process where all the bells and whistles are added. The lead vocal is done, the base production is done, and now it’s time to sit down with the producer to give it a little extra sauce. This can mean:
- Adding more instruments (musicians to come play at studio or using MIDI)
- Adding harmonies (aka vocal stacks) and adlibs
- Working on the structure (adding a chorus repetition, adding an outro)
- Adding transitions between sections (fade outs, transitionary sounds)
- Getting other artists to add a verse or background vocals
- Tweaking any lyric or note changes
- Finalizing effects and processing
This section is not done to a very full extent if you’re a writer recording a demo for another artist. It’s common to add harmonies, but not necessary to slave over tiny details as the final artist or producer the song is handed to will likely make changes.
If you’re an artist yourself, this is where you can really work to make the song come to life in the way that you envision. This is where you give it more personality.
6. Mixing and Mastering
Once production and recording are completely done, every single song must go through the mixing and mastering process, no matter what.
Mixing engineers take the stems (every individual track/element of a song) and balance them so that everything sounds cohesive. This could mean lowering the volume (levels) of certain instruments over others, panning sounds left and right in the stereo field, and using compression and EQ to make sure no sounds are clashing. You can hear the difference between a badly mixed song and a well mixed song right away, as shown in the video below.
Mastering is the process of taking the final mix of a song and making sure it’s ready for playback on all possible devices at the highest possible quality. Our phones, cars, headphones, streaming services, and speakers are all engineered slightly differently and prefer different sample rates, and it’s a mixing engineer’s job to prepare sound files that will sound good in all of those formats.
A good mix and master is the big difference between amateur and professional sounding music, so make sure to never skip this step if you’re planning on releasing something. It is a ridiculously important part of the music making process that cannot be overlooked.
7. Distribution
Once an artist has the final master recording of their song and they want to release it, the song is submitted to a distributor. A distributor is responsible for making music available on all streaming platforms and social media, and sometimes pitching a song to playlists or sync placements. If an artist is signed to a label, the label will take care of distribution and getting the song file to all the right people and places. If they’re independent, they’ll be submitting to a digital distributor such as Distrokid or TuneCore. These platforms are only two of a large number of distribution companies available online that unsigned artists can use. The submission process is very straightforward and requires that you complete it multiple weeks prior to your release date so they have enough time to get everything (metadata, pitching) done correctly and on time. Once submitted, artists can create a pre-save link, pitch to playlists on streaming services themselves, and tease their upcoming release
8. Visual Assets
While the song is being processed for distribution, its visual counterparts will come to life. Cover art, music videos, Spotify canvases, lyric videos, and photoshoots will become a primary focus as they’ll all be needed to some degree to promote the music and get people excited about the release. Cover art should be done first as it must be included with or added to the submission to the distributor, and the rest will follow.
This is when it becomes wise to create a marketing plan so you know when to post what – teasers, BTS footage, snippets, the whole nine yards. The minimum must-haves for any release are cover art, a Spotify canvas, and a long-form and short-form video for social media to announce the project and remind people about it on drop day. If you have footage of the music making process and organize one photoshoot, for example, you’ll have enough static and video content to work with and chop up for different usages.
9. Release and Promotion
Drop day has come and the song is now out in the world… everywhere. It lives on streaming services, social media apps, the general internet, and has the potential to get a placement on TV, in movies, in video games, etc. How do artists make sure the hype continues and the music maintains a healthy stream count? They promote it! Promotion is the heartbeat of the song following release. Through social media posts, interviews, TV show appearances, live performances, and ads, the song stays stuck in the heads of everyone who’s paying attention.
This is when having a write-up or general press from a media outlet is key. Independent artists or labels either reach out to media prior to release so they can prepare a piece about it, or they send it along once it’s out. Either way, the point is to get people talking and make them want to listen. The same goes for playlists. Playlist curators who run very successful Spotify playlists are always looking for new music, so post-release is the perfect time to send them a new song for a potential playlist add. If the song performs well on streaming platforms and social media, radio station programmers will show interest as well.
Any promotion that happens outside of social media often requires a network of contacts, which can be difficult to come by when you’re just starting out. If you want to make connections with people in the industry (journalists, bloggers, playlist curators, influencers, radio stations, labels, and more), you can reach out to them through Groover and send your music directly. Streamlining the pitching process will save you tons of time and energy as you’ll actually get a response with the platform.
10. Royalties
The longer a song is available to the public, the more royalties it accrues. Royalties are the small payments generated every time a song is streamed, downloaded, or played in public, to oversimplify it a little. The intricacies of this system are very complex and explained in more detail in an article dedicated to the topic.
Essentially, everyone who touched the song during its creation (excluding the mixer and masterer) are entitled to a percentage of its copyright (ownership), and thus, the money it makes. Once a song has been released, it must then be registered with royalty collection agencies so that its creators can receive their earnings. This means that everyone involved must be happy with the percentage of ownership they’re getting. Labels do the dirty work here and negotiate with the representatives of the producer, songwriters, and artist to ensure that everyone’s in agreement and contracts can be drawn up. Independent artists have to have these sometimes uncomfortable conversations with their collaborators themselves to make sure they’re on the same page and can register at the earliest convenience.
Once registration is complete, all royalties generated by the song will be paid out to everyone credited on a monthly or quarterly basis.. forever!
11. What Next?
The most rewarding part of making music is that it has no shelf life. Once a song is out, it is out forever and takes on a life of its own. Some songs are hugely successful and are forgotten as fast as they rose, others become canonical industry hits, some maintain a low and steady stream count for years, and others don’t get their moment in the spotlight until decades after their release.
For artists like Rick Astley, Kate Bush, or more recently The Cranberries, the hits that were once on the charts so many years ago (Never Gonna Give You Up, Running Up That Hill, and Linger) found their way back to the forefront of pop culture after decades of inactivity! Whether it’s an internet fad, TV sync placement, or popular cover that gets you there, having a song re-enter the airwaves (and earn a whole new wave of revenue) is not uncommon, but it is unpredictable. We can try to control trends, but there really is no way of knowing what role a song is going to play once it is out in the world. All you can do as an artist is be proud of it, promote it, and continue creating.
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