My Music Production Process

 

A couple months back, one of you requested I write a post explaining my process of writing, recording, editing, and making videos for my music compositions.  As I thought about it, I realized that this post—though astray from the topics I generally post about—is one that I wish I myself had had back when I first took interest in producing arrangements.

  Let me throw in a quick disclaimer that although the title of this post seems rather professional with the term “Music Production” in it, what you are about to hear is not in any way professional and is, frankly, cheap. :)  Do I produce high quality content and stellar music videos?  Nope!  I’m just a thrifty young person trying my best to do what I can with what I have.

  One of the biggest myths I believed early on was that I’d have to spend a good deal of money in order to get started.  Not true!  It just takes some research, creativity, and the willingness to work tediously, and you can accomplish a whole lot.

  I am not very techy and I speak only from my personal experience and the tools I’ve had to work with, so I apologize to those that have different options that I cannot speak knowledgably about.

 

Taking Advantage of Inspiration

  Inspiration will take many forms.  You may find inspiration in nature, in a piece of artwork, in a ringtone.  You may be lying in bed, sitting at the piano, or in church when an idea strikes you.  The important thing is to take advantage of these inspirations.  Don’t let them go to waste!

  Many times an intriguing motif for an arrangement will come while I’m playing around with hymns at the piano, and it’s only there for a split second.  I cannot tell you how many times I wish I had captured the idea for later!  I now whip out my phone and record the ideas on a voice memo.   Some musicians record whole improvisation sessions for this cause.

  If you cannot record something in the moment, write down your idea on the notes app of your phone (this is helpful for lyricists), or even take a scrap piece of paper (I’ve used the back of a bulletin before) to scribble out a melody.  It’ll take some practice and ear training to get your notes right without being able to check them on an instrument, but anything is a start.

  When I have an arrangement idea, I try to write down and/or record as many ideas as I can, so I don’t lose it.

 

Putting Ideas to Music

  After I have collected enough ideas, I start arranging.  I play around for hours with different ideas and chord structures and melodies and key changes and all that jazz.  When I finally have enough structure, I use the Finale software to put my arrangement to music.

  A quick note about Finale: it’s an investment.  Finale is a top-of-the-line music notation software, and many published musicians use it.  If you are serious about writing music, you may want to consider saving for and investing in a good software.  I LOVE Finale and have gotten so much use out of it in just a couple of years.  AND, if you’re a college student in the US, you can now get Finale on a significant discount!  Finale also offers trade-ups from other notation software.

  If you are not ready to invest in Finale or another advanced notation software, I have had friends use MuseScore and other free or inexpensive notation software.  And there’s nothing wrong with a good ole pencil and paper!

  Here’s a little secret: I don’t always write down my arrangements, especially if the piece is arranged for more than 2 or 3 instruments.  Another option is to just write a lead sheet, which you can do relatively easily by hand.  I will do either of these things for arrangements that I only wish to have available for listening.

 

Recording Music

  There are 3 main ways I record music right now: video, Spire, and a microphone.

  Most of the videos on my YouTube channel are just simple videos—taken with an iPhone 8—of my performances or just playing something on my piano at home.  For these videos, I either had a family member holding the camera, or I used a tripod.  I have found I don’t use the tripod as much as I expected.

  I recently discovered how to use audio from a video in lyric videos; I did this for my Toilet Paper Crisis song.  In the video, I accompanied myself while singing, so there was no layering involved.  When I created the lyric slides for the video, I put the audio (from the video) underneath it.

  Spire is my #1 recommendation for free, multi-track recording!  It is free, and allows for up to 8 tracks of recording.  Spire is simple to use; all you need is a pair of earbuds!  I usually start out with a basic accompaniment (piano or guitar) and add instruments where I want on the other tracks.  Most of these arrangements are improvised and done by-ear, and are never put to music.  Some examples of Spire recordings include How Firm a Foundation, Day By Day, and Be Thou My Vision.

  The third way I record is using a microphone.  The only arrangement I have released thus far using my microphone is Creatures of Worship.  I have found that my microphone works great for a solo piano recording, but I haven’t yet figured out how to make it work for more instruments.  Because this post is geared towards those who want to start producing music but have limited resources, I am not going to go into detail about everything involved with using a professional microphone.

Spire>Dropbox

  If I’ve recorded with Spire, I upload the completed file to Dropbox at this time.  I usually send my recording to my brothers and a friend to get their feedback before proceeding.

 

Gathering Video Footage

  Creating the video is probably the most tedious and time-consuming aspect, but also the most fun!

  For Creatures of Worship, the video footage came from my younger brother’s drone.  He uploaded the drone footage to my laptop, and one of my older brothers mixed this footage on his laptop with Davinci Resolve.

  For How Firm a Foundation, I took an American flag photo from Pixabay, edited it in PowerPoint to create the cover I wanted, and saved it as an image.

  For Be Thou My Vision, I took videos with my iPhone as I played my instruments outdoors.  Although I tried to match the tempo by memory of what the Spire recording sounded like, I would now opt to take 2 phones outside for recording—one to listen to the recording as I play along, and the other to take the video.  You want you videos to be in sync with your audio.  Remember that these videos are not for audio purposes at all, so you are free to make as many terrible sounds as you want.

  For Toilet Paper Crisis, a friend took the background photo for my use.

 

Creating a Video

  My laptop is a Lenovo (Windows), and came with the Photos App.  Although my brother has used the free software Davinci Resolve, he has advised that my laptop should not handle a software that powerful, so I have resorted to using the Photos App, which has worked suprisingly well!  I’ll give you a quick rundown of how I use the Photos App to create a video.

 

1. When you open the app, select new video and then new video project in your upper right-hand corner.

2. Name your video.

3. To add photos/videos to the project: under Project Library on your left side, click + Add > my collection.  Choose whichever photos/videos you’d like, then drag them from the Project Library box to the Storyboard below.  You can further drag your photos and videos around to put them in the order you would like.  You have options to adjust time duration, remove black bars, add motion, insert 3D effects, add text, and more.

 

4.  To insert audio: click custom audio > + Add audio file.  At this point, you can insert an audio file OR select a video that you want to take your audio from.

5.  You audio is now in!  Because my initial photo in the storyboard only has a duration of 3 seconds, my audio only takes up 3 seconds!  At this point, I will go back to the storyboard and adjust the photo’s duration to 153 seconds (or 2:33, which is the length of the audio file).  I’ll then return to the audio file and adjust the audio to cover all 2 minutes and 33 seconds.

6.  Time to add the song’s title to the cover photo.  On your storyboard, click text and this screen will pop up.  Experiment with this tool until you get the title the way you want.  Drag the pink bar on the playback line to cover however much of the video you want the text to display.

 

7.  When you are done with everything, click Finish video and then export.

 

 

That’s just about it!  Let me know if you have any questions.  Happy creating!