I’m hoping to finish production and mixing & mastering on the new album anytime soon. Since I do everything myself (including the mastering) the whole process takes quite some time.
After creating tracks, I’m leaving them to mature for a while, which also gives me a certain ‘detachment’ that I need in the next phase: that would be to not focus on individual tracks, but on the album as a whole. What’s it telling, how will the listening experience, and what would a listener come across on the way? The order of the tracks, the mood swings between them, the change in pace and emotional tone are important. They need to ‘glue’ the album together, not just be some nice tracks in a row. This is also the production phase where I often rip tracks apart, and partially rebuild them because their context requires it.
Then the last phase is the fine tuning of the audio, the ‘mastering’ process. This requires a ‘clean ear’, so I prefer to not listen to any of the tracks for a little while, to simulate a ‘first impression’ (I know, you can’t, but that’s still the best thing to do).
The mastering process usually involves me getting completely anti-social and locked up for a few weeks, slowly going crazy over tiny details.
During the whole process I’m keeping this Soundcloud list more or less updated:
