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Formation of a Song by: Ben Blakesley As industry insiders, we sometimes forget that when discussing the recording process, the rest of the world really has no idea what we are talking about. Hopefully this will provide an explanation of the song formation process in layman's terms so that there may be less disconnect between the professional and the consumer. As with any creative process, there is no absolute hard and fast procedure that must be followed stringently, but there is a logical development that all recordings must go through, which includes: Composition Arrangement Recording Editing Mixing Mastering That being said, this is an explanation of that general process and what takes place during each of these steps. Composition Composition is really where a song or piece is born. Preceding this step may be brainstorming and idea formation, but the song actually begins to take a real form and become an entity in itself during this stage. This is what separates ideas and melodies floating around in the air from actual well-formed songs. There isn't a whole lot to be said concerning Composition, other than it consists of forming a melody (and often basic accompaniment) that flows chronologically from a start to a finish. Lyrics (if applicable) will also likely be written at this time. Arrangement Arranging is taking the Composition that has been created and determining what instruments will be used for the recording, writing the parts that those instruments will play, and the tempo (speed, beats per minute) that the song will be played in. To best illustrate this point, think of the song 'What a Wonderful World.' The most famous version of this song is arguably the one sung by the great Louis 'Satchmo' Armstrong. Compare this to the Ramones version of the same song. Both are based on the same Composition, but with entirely different results based on the fact that they are Arranged differently using very contrasting instrumentation and are at vastly different tempos. (You can use any number of examples to illustrate this principle; 'Yesterday', 'Happy Birthday', etc.). Arrangement, as with Composition, may range anywhere from informally assigning parts to instruments to drafting the parts using musical notation, all dependent on the preferences of the arranger and the formality of the project. Recording Now we start to get a little more technical. The term Recording is often used to refer to this and the following three steps as a whole, but for simplicity's sake, the term Recording is used here to mean 'putting performances to tape' (or as is the case now, a digital format). This is also referred to as Tracking, Cutting Tracks, etc. Recording Studios have long been somewhat of a mystery to industry outsiders, but basically what takes place during Recording is microphones and various (expensive) sound altering equipment are used to capture a sound being produced in an acoustically tuned room or environment and storing that sound information onto some sort of media (be it magnetic tape, a computer hard drive, or, in the old days, acetate discs). Generally, a process called Multi-Tracking is used for commercial recordings in which each microphone (and hence, each sound, be it vocals, guitar, or cello) is printed discretely to the storage media to be manipulated at a later time. To simplify it a bit, the 'normal' stereo recording that a consumer would hear is comprised of two tracks or channels, the Right and the Left. During the Recording or Multi-Tracking stage, there are virtually innumerable quantities of tracks or channels that can each be controlled separately from the other tracks. For instance if you have recorded a vocal part on one track and a guitar part on another, because they were recorded discretely in a Multi-Track setting, the volume of the vocals can be increased or decreased without affecting the sound or volume of the guitar track whatsoever. In a typical session, what you would be left with after completing the Recording stage is any number of discrete tracks each containing an instrument. An example of a track listing for a rock song might be: Track 1: Kick Drum Track 2: Snare Drum Track 3: High Tom Track 4: Low Tom Track 5: Overhead Left Track 6: Overhead Right Track 7: Bass Guitar Track 8: Electric Guitar Track 9: Acoustic Guitar Track 10: Keyboard Left Track 11: Keyboard Right Track 12: Lead Vocals Track 13: Background Vocals Meaning that each of these tracks had a microphone assigned to it for the specific purpose of recording the desired source. (Notice that tracks 1-6 are for various parts of a typical drum set). Also (not to complicate things further, but') these instruments need not be recorded at the same time. The bass guitar player could record his/her part on Thursday, and the vocalist might lay down tracks a week later. Basically, because they are on separate tracks, the musicians do not have to be playing at the same time or even in the same place to create a finished product that sounds like they were looking right at each other. This also enables a multi-instrumentalist to record all the instruments themselves and create their own 'virtual' band where they are the only member. Editing Had this exercise been written 15 years ago, I would not have included Editing as its own section as it generally takes place during Recording and Mixing on an 'as needed' basis. But with the evolution and general industry acceptance of digital and non-linear recording formats, Editing has become a much more important and functional stage in the creation of a musical work. Simply put, Editing consists of changing the original recording by way of altering the timing, pitch, or speed of an individual track, or tracks to change the performance. One such common practice is referred to as 'comping.' Comping is the idea of recording multiple takes of one instrument with the intent of compiling all of the takes into one cohesive take for the purpose of eliminating errors or creating a 'perfect' take. For instance, a vocalist may sing the same part over and over again making mistakes in different parts on each take. Rather than continuing to search for a complete perfect take, or settling for the best take and having to live with the mistakes, the recording engineer (the guy turning all the knobs ) will choose the best take and then after identifying each mistake within that take, pull the line, phrase, word, or even syllable from another take where the mistake did not occur and paste that into the correct spot on the best take essentially eliminating the mistake and making it sound like it was performed and recorded without it. Digitally, this process is simple and can be completed with just a couple of mouse clicks. Using analog tape, it becomes much more cumbersome and requires a series of meticulous tasks to record to a third track while muting and un-muting the source tracks, or pulling out the old razor blade and slicing away. This is just one example of the use and purpose of Editing. To go into the virtually infinite uses would be long and redundant as the editing limits in the digital domain are nearly limitless. Mixing The Mixing stage is necessitated by the differences in the format that is used in the Recording stage and the format that the end consumer is able to use. If you recall, when we finished the Recording stage, we were left with (for example) 13 different tracks, each with it's own instrument. Each of these tracks by now has been edited to contain the best possible performance during the Editing stage, but they are still individual tracks and not one cohesive song that a consumer can pop in the CD player. For argument's sake, we will only discuss Mixing down to stereo and not touch upon surround sound, 5.'1
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