Why Does It Take SO Long To Release An Album? Part 1 (Patreon)

Why does it take so long to release an album? Well stay tuned and I’m going to break it down for you. This is based off the Join The Club album release, so other bands may do it differently, but due to the sheer ridiculous amount of steps I noted down whilst putting a rough plan together, this post is definitely going to have to be a 2 parter.

1. Write the songs.

Writing a song usually takes us anywhere between 5 minutes and 1 month, so you see how there is no rhyme or reason to this and every artist is different, every song - is different. It also depends if we are all together when we write. We all write our own parts so the guys could have a whole song written instrumentally but it’s not written until I’ve finished all the lyrics and melodies, so again this can cause a lot of delays as we are usually continuously time poor, which is why so many big artists go and trap themselves away somewhere, booking out that time specifically for the purpose of writing.

2. Record demos.

Pretty self explanatory, but we need to record rough versions of the tracks to work from, again we all record tracks from home and it’s another activity that takes time.

3. F**k with demos a lot.

This is where we start making our first edits and changes to the demos, this can be anything from lyrical changes, to making bridges twice as long. It’s also where we start arguing about if songs should resolve or fade out. Once again… you know what, let's just assume all of these steps take time and that we are forever and always time poor.

4. Send demos to our producer.

I’m now going to immediately go back on what I just said as this step is quick as it’s literally an email with a link…

5. Pre-production with our producer.

This is where our producer hurts our feelings and re-edits all of our edits. I’m kidding, producers are fab when you find the right one for you and your music, our producer is great and we all work together to make the songs even better!  Getting someone with a fresh set of ears to listen to your songs (I’m talking producer/musician level, not your mum. Although your mum may be a music producer for all I know, in which case send away!) but they can hear things that you don’t, they can usually hear even the smallest changes that will just elevate the song to another level, and these are the kinds of people you want to work with!

6. Record songs.

Okay so, recording songs is going to consist of lots of different steps including studio hire, equipment hire, in our case on Join The Club, building a wall of acoustic panels to create an at-home vocal booth. We recorded almost everything in our living room, and then went into the studio to record drums. In true As December Falls fashion we recorded the drums last, because when we record we often still make edits and changes to compositions and arrangements. It’s fiddly to do drastic drum edits, so we work with terrible demo drums, which I personally love, because when we do get that first edit back it sounds so different and full compared to the tracks that we’ve all got used to whilst recording.

7. Producer edits songs.

A job I never want ever, as this literally consists of putting every element of every song in the perfect place. Time correcting 10-12 songs of drums is just not on my list of fun things to do.

8. Send to mixing engineer.

Another email…

9. Changes.

This is where Timmy is in his element and he asks for things like, ‘can you turn the rhythm guitar at time stamp 1:56 down by 3db.’

10. Send to mastering engineer.

Another email…

11. MORE F***ING CHANGES.

Honestly at this point I’ve clocked out of the editing process.

12. Send body of work to distributors.

Our distributors help put our music on to streaming services and also sort out deals with different stores for retail sales.

Okay at this point, all we have is the songs and we’re 12 steps in… We have a long old way to go before we’re even close to releasing the album, and believe it or not, this part ^^^ was the fun bit about creating an album.

Part two is on the way and honestly it’s way longer than this half so prepare yourselves for that. As always let me know if there is anything you wanna hear more about whether it’s related to this blog or anything else for that matter!

Until next time mother fluffers🖤