It’s more useful and important than ever for songwriters to be fluent with recording and producing our songs; to do it competently for ourselves or to find a partner who can help.

Even going the latter route, if and when partnerships break up you’re back to the same dilemma: Our ‘demos’ are supposed to sound like masters – or at least close. And few of us have the money to go to a ‘real’ recording studio (with an engineer) every time we write a song.

So, on one hand, you do have to get comfortable with recording your songs. But there are pitfalls that often ensue, and they’re easy to fall into.

Let’s say you, like many others (including me), get into production and want to/have to make good sounding recordings of your songs. You get into a DAW – Logic, ProTools, Ableton, etc. – and start learning. There are lots of places to get help; from friends, books, on YouTube, on training sites.

It’s easy to go down that recording/production rabbit hole – in fact, as with everything, you have to go down the rabbit hole and get obsessed, at least for a while, to become any good. (As Woody Allen said about his pretty good but not great clarinet playing, “I have to practice every day just to be this bad.”)

But as hard as it is to become a good producer/arranger/recordist… it’s still not as hard as writing songs. In the former you’re usually creating something from something. In the latter you’re often creating something from nothing.

When you’re producing, you’re usually working on recording an already-written song, or creating a beat for it; that kind of thing. Whatever you do, you start with a song, a recording, a musician, a sound, a loop, and it gives you something back as you listen. You get a playback, you try different sounds, effects, balances… and those sounds, effects, etc, are already there, waiting for you to use them.

When you write a song from scratch… it’s just you and the song. Prose writers call it The Blank Page. (In a way we’re lucky because we get to make sounds as we go.) All writers have to deal with this – much of the time you start with nothing. Or very little, like a title, or a lick… or a writing prompt, if you’re in a workshop.

Look at the movie business. A lot of people start as screenwriters and then become directors. If they’re successful at that, they usually stop writing. Then they hire other writers to do the writing. Why? At least part of the answer is that writing can be a hard, solitary business. It’s easier to have meetings and lunches and talk a lot, sometimes to writers, than to grind out the writing yourself.

The same kind of problem can come up for songwriters and recording. As challenging as it is to become good with recording, sounds, arrangements… it’s still easier than sitting down by yourself or with a partner (which for some people helps a lot) and whipping up something from nothing or almost nothing.

The bottom line is twofold. It’s unquestionably important to know how to capably record your songs or get them recorded well. And it’s easy for songwriting to get sidetracked by recording.

If you want to remain a songwriter and get better at it, this is a delicate balancing act – to fall into the wonderful world of digital recording and at the same time stay faithful to the sometimes painful but highly rewarding process of songwriting and the commitment it requires. This balance, a personal one for each of us, can easily slip out of whack. Finding and maintaining that balance is a worthwhile goal.

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