Music production is songwriting, arranging, tracking, editing, mixing, and mastering. Songwriting comes from a story, experience, or situations that have been inspired and written in the form of a note, poem, or book. Many songwriters tell a story that they feel people want to hear about. Some explain a narrative of history, dreams or adventures. After the song or story has been composed, the arrangement on how the song is presented comes in to play. Arranging a song deals with what makes a song interesting. What instruments are to be used, and the texture of how they are introduced in the song. Also, you don’t want the format to be repetitious. That makes the song boring, and nobody will stay interested in your story. After agreeing on the arrangement, the tracking process begins. For me, this is the fun part, because you get to use the equipment to work your magic. You get to use a selection of mics that will define the instruments and or vocals being recorded. The goal is to capture the performance of the song and place them on tracks, and sometimes it may take several takes to get the best ones. Remember, it’s your story, and you want it told right. You then move to the editing phase of the project. Which actually can begin along with the tracking phase. In doing this, you save time having to clean up most mistakes made in recording. This is not set in stone because you should work with what works for you. And you don’t want to overdo this process, because you can end up destroying the song completely. Now, you want the song commercial ready, and this happens in the mastering process. You want everyone to enjoy your work being played on any device that they use for listening. Whether it’s a phone, in a car, or on a home entertainment station. Mastering prepares your creation to be heard with clarity and quality, and that’s what you’re wanting everyone to experience. So, the process may take some time to complete, but it’s worth every cent. On a side note, make sure you have a good producer who can relay to the engineer(s) what you are going for.