• Concept for the music

• Composing all the instrumental parts

• Sound design, sample selection, etc.

• Programming of MIDI parts

• Performance of live parts

• Recording of live parts (which may include auditioning microphones, experimenting with placement, capturing multiple takes, punch-ins and overdubs, and so on)

• Writing lyrics

• Vocal performance

• Vocal recording

• Production (which may include timing correction, sample replacement, vocal tuning, and much more)

• Arrangement

• Mixing

• Mastering

Nearly every one of these bullet points is its own job on a major production, but most independent artists try to do it all on their own, and that’s rarely the way to release great music regularly.

Music production has never been more accessible and affordable than it is today. The widespread availability of digital audio workstation (DAW) software has made it easier and cheaper than ever before to record and release music from an artist’s home.

But that freedom comes with a cost.

Many artists feel like they’re all alone and like they have to do everything themselves because they’re afraid that working in a professional studio environment will cost them thousands of dollars they don’t have or will cause them to sacrifice their artistic vision to please a producer.

The Steps To Create A Song

To go from “an idea for a song” to “a fully realized, release-ready piece of music” is a long and winding road. Let’s assume you can play all the instruments you need to make your song, and you’re going to use a combination of in-the-box production and recorded sound to finish your track. The steps you’ll need to complete, at a minimum, are:

The Role Of Skill In Making Music

As tempting as going all in on DIY is, the reality is that most of us aren’t great at everything. We cultivate expertise in relatively narrow lanes. If you’re an independent musician, do you think you’re equally good at drum programming and mastering? The truth is that you probably aren’t unless you’re a total beginner at both.

Being a great songwriter doesn’t make you a great producer. Being a great producer doesn’t make you a great mix engineer. Of course, some of these skills translate reasonably well or function as good foundations for others, but rarely does being great at one thing make you great at another. Obviously, being a great guitarist has very little to do with being a great trombonist.

Doing it all yourself is rarely going to help you release more and better music that you believe is a great reflection of your artistic (or commercial) vision. And it certainly isn’t going to make you feel accomplished and inspired, because as an artist, few things feel worse than feeling like your skills are unable to achieve your taste.

The Role Of Tools In Making Music

There’s an old saying: “a poor craftsman blames his tools.” It’s true, up to a point. But you don’t see a lot of woodworkers building beautiful furniture using worn out, rusty saws, chipped chisels, and imprecise rulers, do you? There comes a point at which a person’s skill eclipses the capabilities of the tools they’re using, and the tools become a bottleneck for overall quality or speed, and ultimately impede the quality of output. Nearly all great artisans take pride in their tools. They invest in them, maintain them, and benefit from the improved capabilities and precision of improved tools.

The same is true with music. If you can’t hear a problem in a mix, how could you ever fix it? High quality monitoring capabilities and thorough acoustic treatment aren’t “nice-to-haves” in the world of high quality music production: they’re necessities.

And even if you hear an issue in the audio, the question remains: do you have the right tool for the job? Sometimes, you can work around the wrong tool by investing more time and effort, but that’s time and effort that could be poured into making more music instead of inventing a hobgoblin solution where a simple, elegant one exists.

As a musician, do you want to be on the constant treadmill of buying more tools and investing the time to learn them?

Or, would you prefer to spend your time actually making music?

Listeners Have Choices And They Will Not Give Your Music A Chance If It Doesn’t Sound Professional

Luminate estimated that there were nearly ONE MILLION new songs uploaded to digital streaming platforms every month in 2024. Music fans are spoiled for choice like never before. It’s hard to be an artist today.

But the harsh truth is that many artists (maybe even most) stack the deck against themselves by releasing amateur sounding music.

No matter how good your songs are, many people will not give them a chance if they don’t sound as polished, loud, and clear as their favorite musicians’ songs sound.

You don’t have to do it alone. There’s a better way.

The Cat Mansion specializes in working with independent artists to bring their vision to life in sound. Only you know what your music is meant to sound like, but The Cat Mansion can help you achieve that sound.

How Are Successful Modern Musicians Working With Pro Studios?

The quality of amateur home recordings today is astounding. Technology has come so far. Gone are the days when most artists needed to book large studios for days or weeks at a time to record their music. Gone are the days of musicians being routinely swindled by shady producers who push artists to make small changes to songs in order to earn songwriting credits. Gone are the days of needing a giant analog console to get great sound.

Today, with a just decent audio interface, a couple of affordable microphones, a MIDI keyboard, and a DAW, musicians can compose and record high quality music at home. However, very few home studios are in effectively treated rooms equipped with truly professional quality monitor speakers, which means most home studio mixes translate poorly.

Modern independent musicians use pro studios differently. They hire producers for a flat hourly fee rather than trading points of revenue. Modern musicians hire engineers to mix and master their recordings so they can get professional quality results in a fraction of the time without the headaches of working in a room that doesn’t sound right. They work with studios to gain short term access to equipment and sounds that will enhance their music without breaking the bank.

Why?

Because time is the most valuable resource any of us has. And if you’re a musician who’s honed their skills in composing and performing music, spending hundreds or thousands on plugins and then pouring dozens of hours into mixing each song you record - only to have it fail to sound like your favorite recordings - is a terrible use of both time and money.

What Services Does The Cat Mansion Offer?

• Do you need someone who’s as passionate about music as you are to discuss your ideas? To give you candid, objective, and useful feedback on your work?

• Do you need a mentor who can help you advance your technical skills?

• Do you need a producer who’ll help push your songs to the next level?

• Do you need professional advice and mentorship to get great quality recordings in your space using the equipment you already have?

• Do you need access to high quality audio equipment to process your recordings?

• Do you need your guitar, bass, or synth re-amped through a selection of world class effects?

• Do you need your vocal timing and tuning corrected carefully by hand so you don’t sound like a robot? Or do you want it corrected so that you do sound like a robot?

• Do you want to record your instrumentals or vocals in person using our selection of world class microphones from Neumann, Royer, Soyuz, Shure, AKG, and others?

• Do you want access to an awesome selection of sounds on modern and classic hardware synthesizers, samplers, and drum machines without having to spend thousands of dollars to buy them yourself?

• Do you need your music professionally mixed using top of the line analog hardware and best-in-class plugins?

• Do you need your music professionally mastered so that it’s loud and clear and sounds as professional as your favorite artist?

• Do you need to pet one or more friendly cats? We have four (Lieam, Echo, Jasper, and Simon), and they are hungry for head skritches.

You Can Do All That And More At The Cat Mansion.