Beginners Guide To Music Production and Audio Engineering

By Milo Evans Jr

I designed this ebook for those who want a simple and brief understanding of the broadness of music productions and audio engineering tips and tricks. Watching thousands of hours of YouTube and online videos can tire you out. I have over the years paid for many books to help me understand the nature of production and songwriting. If I can take it all back, I wouldn't. It has helped me over the years to narrow in getting better at production. This book will not teach you music production and audio engineering. Instead, it points out the tips you can use while exploring and getting used to your newfound passion - from equipment, pitch correction, sound design, mixing, sound recording, music syncing, and monetization. I advise that if you want step-by-step to creating beats or sounds, YouTube is a great source and resource , and if you want to take your creativity to the next level, it takes patience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Milo Evans Jr
• Release date: Jun 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201206734

Book preview

Chapter 1

What is Music Production?

If you're like most new beginners in the world of music production, one of the first questions you probably want to ask is 'What's music production?' 'Who's a music producer?' It's perfect to ask such questions seeing that music production is quite different from television and film production.

Defining music production can be a little hard as it has, over the years, become a description for a variety of skills lumped together to create a role. However, this role has evolved in meaning beyond what it was perceived in the last 50 years.

Music production refers to the process of managing and overseeing the recording and production of a track so it can be distributed and enjoyed. In other words, music production can be seen as the entire lifecycle of a piece of music – from songwriting and arranging to tracking, editing, mixing, and mastering.

All of the recorded music that you know and love all exists because it went through music production. It is the sum of activities that enable tracks to meet a standard of quality by which we call good music regardless of the style.

Despite the broad definition of music production and the process, which may vary from band to band, music production components are basically the same. These components make up the key stages of music production, and they include:

Songwriting

Arranging

Tracking

Editing

Mixing

Mastering

If you’re looking to gain an understanding of what music production is all about, you will need to familiarize yourself with what each of the stages above mean. Let’s get into the details now.

1. Songwriting

The beginning of virtually all music production processes involves writing and composing songs. Admittedly, a large part of today's music is wordless, so songwriting can be seen as the process of assembling musical ideas together to form a larger structure of the coherent melody, harmony, and rhythm.

In other words, songwriting may be defined as the art and act of professionally composing musical compositions and writing lyrics for a song. It also includes developing a melody and arranging the musical ideas to a specific musical style, harmonic structure, and rhythm.

While the criteria for a good song are debatable, we can all agree that it largely depends on the listener. This makes the idea of a 'good song' a subjective one as it depends on its evaluation. Still, it can also be evaluated based on how well the elements of music (melody, harmony, rhythm, etc.) agree together in a pleasantly recognizable way while still being creative and containing the music's message.

The point is that music production begins with songwriting. Before adding the other aspects of music production, a song should sound great even if it is played barely with only one instrument. Thus, it's critical to get this stage right so the rest will roll out with ease.

2. Arranging

Many people are familiar with the first stage of music production but often have minimal idea of what this stage is all about. You can tell a poorly arranged song if it has scored high in frequency in the beat and melody and also gets repetitive in a short while.

So what exactly is arranging in music production? It can broadly be defined as how the various parts of a song combine with