My Process

For me, a song becomes truly real when I finally make a recording of it.

Writing a song can take any amount of time; some of my songs have sat undeveloped for years.  For me, a song is “written” when it is ready to be recorded.  For that, I must make a lyric sheet (what musicians call a “chart”) In any case, you need to know how the song begins, how many measures, and where the chord changes are.  I lay the song out: measures located with downbeats and chords.  Not standard musical notation.  Something like this: 

I usually start by generating a demo, a rough recording that maps out the song accurately in terms of time.  Starting with a click track, I sing the song the way I hear it in my head, then put down rhythm guitar, bass, piano, percussion. This bed track is what the professional musicians that I hire will play to.  The professionals will record their track or tracks listening to my demo as “the band”.  Once I get a good track (say, a bass track) from one of the pros, I delete the track that I myself recorded on the demo. This process gets repeated with each track, with each professional guest musician.  Ultimately, track by track, my demo tracks are replaced by tracks recorded by professionals.  

In the old days before Covid, I usually brought musicians into the studio, where I would be the sound engineer and record them on my old, beloved Korg D-1200 multi-track recorder.  I would then get the tracks to a professional producer, and that person would mix and master the song into a commercially viable tune, one that, if you heard it unknowingly out of the blue on the radio, you might well like.  

Covid changed all this, bringing me fully into the digital age.  No longer did I have my multi-tracker, which, though labeled “digital”, was still essentially an old-fashioned tape recorder.  I started using Garage Band, the free and most basic music editing software.   Because of the reality of Covid, I could not have musicians in the studio; instead, I send them the demo that I have just recorded, and they record their track (say, bass, or keyboard or whatever it is) with their own equipment, using my demo as guide.  

All of this is accomplished remotely, with me sending out the demo, having some clarifying exchange via email with the musician, then they sending me the finished track or track.  More often than not, it will be more than one.  For instance, my percussionist will send me four or five tracks (bass drum, hi-hat, ride cymbal…); the keyboard player might offer a piano track and enhance it with a few measures on the organ; a guitar guy might develop a half dozen tracks, often in pairs labeled things like GTR-SLIDE1.wav and GTR-SLIDE2.wav, as well as an acoustic track and bass track. 

Now, in the post-Covid era when most of my contributors contribute remotely over the internet, only occasionally do I have one in the studio, and that is mostly for a vocalist: a lot of my vocal tracks are done the old-fashioned way.  

I gather the various tracks that comprise a song in a GarageBand project, which might look like this:  

At the top is the Song Layout, my own initial guide that I use to produce my own first demo.  Often it is made up of a click track and me singing and playing rhythm guitar.  Little by little the other tracks get added.  

When I have all the music that will comprise the song, all the tracks, that is, I will send that material to my producer, who will mix and master the music into a coherent song.  While I could conceivably do that myself using GarageBand, my producer will develop a much more polished product, one that, were you to hear it on the radio, you might say, “Hey, that’s a nice song.”