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An overview of the different roles in making music.
I haven’t blogged for a while so I thought I’d get back into things with a blog post about the difference between music composition, production, mixing and mastering. These terms of are closely related but they are not the same thing. If you are working on your own then you have to apply all of these skills, a demanding and often tricky process.
There’s only so much we can control as individual musicians working on our own. We might be limited to the virtual instruments (or real performances) we can afford to purchase to create our own track as well as our knowledge of how to use the DAW. A DAW is a Digital Audio Workstation and is where the tracks get recorded and blended with all the other instruments that go into laying down a single track.
Production is the responsibility for the overall sound including decisions like whether you will record live musicians (if funds permit) or whether you will use virtual instruments. Mixing is when you decide how to blend those different instruments into a single track, including raising and lowering the volume for each individual instrument so the right parts can be heard at the right time. Mastering is more of a finishing process where decisions about whether the whole mix should sound like it’s in a big echoing room or whether it sounds like a small studio recording with a more flat sound.
The easiest way to grasp the difference beween production, mixing and mastering is to think about the difference between a school band playing a piece of music and the same peice of music played by a professional orchestra. The difference in the sound (due to limitations of skill, instrument etc) in the school band will mean the piece may sound quite different than the expert performance of the orchestra.
While the piece of music is technically the same piece of music, it is likely to sound quite different. This is imporant when it comes to judging someone’s ability at composition because without access to professional musicians and recording spaces, the original composition is going to be judged on what may be a very limited production. This can be quite frustrating to a beginner composer as you hear mistakes in the performance, mixing or mastering that have nothing to do with the original score.
Introducing Free Piano Solo BookletsThemes:Learning new skills: performing, recording, composing, engaging!
Published 25th May 2026I'm introducing booklets to make my piano music easier to find and use. If you're here for the first time, I'd like to welcome you to my site and my music. During the lockdowns, I wrote a large number of original compositions, many of them for solo piano. My int ... |
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Published 12th May 2026Check out my growing list of new trumpet arrangements The aim of these arrangements is to extend the repertoire for trumpet at a rate of one every week or so (and play my favourite music!). These arrangements are divided between public domain classics an ... |
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Published 17th Mar 2026See the music world through the eyes of the blind I also introduced direct access to Musescore files of every score. This big change came about after I was asked about providing Musescore files on Reddit to a vision-impaired user.This seemed a f ... |
My debut trumpet EP - what went right, what went wrongThemes:Learning new skills: performing, recording, composing, engaging!
Published 29th Jan 2026The adventure of my first cover song EP, from recording to getting them onto the streaming platforms. Today marks a huge milestone in my musical endeavours. I have released my first trumpet recordings. I've also published the backing tracks created for each track on YouTube so other musicians can ... |
Interview with Music Industry ProThemes:Learning new skills: performing, recording, composing, engaging!
Published 23rd Oct 2025Find out what it takes to break into and survive in the Australian music industry As a requirement of my TAFE course in music performance I have interviewed industry professional, Michael Chambers to share knowledge of what is important to get right when you're entering or survi ... |
Musescore has been emptying my bank accountThemes:When machines rule the world!
Published 4th Sep 2025Crazy charges from Musescore have cost me a fortune
Musescore is a website built for storing and sharing musical scores created with the free software of the same name. The software makers have no ties to the score-sharing site apart from sharin ... |
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Published 30th Aug 2025Tech bros want us to pay for their free lunch The first notion I had that the music industry is about to be hit by a tidal wave with the potential to destroy livelihoods was when I logged into my music distributor dashboard after a long absen ... |
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Published 26th Jul 2025A look at what happens when you go viral on TikTok I've only recently gone back into doing my music. A couple of years into my composing efforts, I'd gotten distracted by other things. A few weeks ago I decided to check back into my distributor's das ... |
The Story Behind Bin Chicken BanterThemes:Learning new skills: performing, recording, composing, engaging!
Published 16th Jul 2025The Bin Chicken is as Australian as Bluey. I wrote a piece to honour their place in Australian culture. I recently released an album of brass band/ensemble pieces, including the track titled 'Bin Chicken Banter. Considering much of my audience is from outside Australia, I thought I should explain what a ... |
The Story Behind AntarcticaThemes:Learning new skills: performing, recording, composing, engaging!
Published 10th Jul 2025This blog post follows the story of my piece Antarctica from duet to chamber orchestra. If you are at all familiar with my scores you may have noticed that there are usually several arrangements of the same piece. Writing for the general public chamber groups is very much a hit and mis ... |
A look at the benefits and questions raised by composition competitionsThemes:Learning new skills: performing, recording, composing, engaging!
Published 30th Jun 2022Composition competitions, are they worth it? As a fledgling composer I have had the joy of experiencing many things for the first time over the past 18 months. One of those things is entering composition competitions. Not long after I beg ... |
How realistic orchestral tracks are madeThemes:Learning new skills: performing, recording, composing, engaging!
Published 10th Aug 2021A basic intro to how composers create realistic orchestral music without an orchestra. Since I published this blog post, I have gone on to write and produce multiple tracks for orchestra as well as several commissions for chamber groups for members of the local Amateur Chamber Music ... |
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[23] Cheerful
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[18] Dramatic
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[96] Gentle
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[15] Invigorating
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[16] Sad
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