So I know there are a lot of people who swear by the process of segmenting their music making process into certain stages, i.e. sound designing, writing, arranging, mixing, etc., because to them it is a more efficient way of doing things.

For example, if you are writing music and trying to come up with a new song idea, it wouldn't be an efficient use of your time to try and get the mix sounding super tight as you're writing it because it will mess with your flow/ flow state. That I totally understand.

One of the things I tend to do though is after I have a solid idea down, and I start arranging it, my arranging process ends up kind of getting merged with my mixing process and I seem to do both of those at the same time. Does anybody do the same thing? I feel like throughout the whole writing process, I am intermittently mixing my track and kind of tightening it up as I go along. Not quite sure if it is Resistance in disguise and is actually slowing down my music making process, or if it is just part of my writing style and is kind of who I am as a producer. Could be all of the above!

Let me know if you guys go through something similar to this. Cheers!

The only thing that I really separate are my composition process and production process.


I play a few instruments so I try to utilize that by writing the notes first. If the notes sound good on a piano then I know that if it sounds bad in my DAW it's gonna be because of the mix or arrangement. I'm not to sure whether it makes things any faster but It doesn't feel like it makes things any slower.


Arranging, mixing, and sound design are a bit of a different story. It's hard for me to tell whether an instrumentation is going to sound good without everything already being mixed. Therefore I like to build out the full instrumentation first (Bass, Drums, Harmony, Leads, FX, etc..) and simply arrange it from there. I've seen virtual riot use this method in his livestream and avicii does the same thing. Same goes for Zedd when it comes to writing things on a piano first. Not to sure about whether he writes his full instrumentation first though.

I'll write a part and I'll do a small mix/EQ on it and slap my mastering chain on. It gives a good idea of what the finish product may sound like.
I never leave mastering on though. Always turn it off.

i write and sound design the same time , because the sound design helps me write diffrently .
the last thing i do is balance and some compression
lately i dont compress a lot excpect drums and drop synths

This is something I wondered about too.

I had an experienced producer tell me this:

It's OK to EQ/pan/etc. as you go, but after the composition/arrangement stage is done and you're actually ready to mix, you should set everything back to zero and build the mix back up from scratch.

So far I've had trouble sticking to that.

I can't tell from looking at the comments here, but is there a difference between how us amateurs do it and how the pros do it?

a lot of 'pros' also bounce everything down to audio and then do a final mix from those audio parts. I once read that Deadmau5 does this. So he will mix in his project but then for the final version he will export everything to audio and do a final mix down.
I know a few high level producers who do this. Also makes sense because when you are mixing other peoples music you generally do Stem mixes anyway.