These are by no means set in stone, and are based entirely on how I personally like to think about the process. The breakdown is meant to be used as a general guideline to help organize the process in our minds. Many times, we do a few of these at once (e.g. songwriting and arranging, tracking and editing and mixing, etc.). But on average, these are the general steps taken to produce a track – consciously or not – and it’s helpful to understand what goes into each stage so we can execute it properly and get the best results.