What to Record Next?

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Being indecisive is killing your productions. Hey, my name's Joe Gilder.

[00:00:04]I've been making music in a home studio for over half my life and for the last almost two decades I've been helping home studio musicians get to a point where they can release music that they're proud of. Music that has a professional quality that they're happy to share with the world.

[00:00:17]I've noticed a thing in working with clients and and also when I look at myself and how I work creatively both here on this channel in this business as well as making my own music and there is a thing that can plague my progress if I'm not careful and I have to regularly watch it to make sure this doesn't happen and that thing is indecision. Um, there's this fear around making decisions. Fear of making the wrong decision, fear of wasting time pursuing one thing that isn't going to move the needle forward and that leads to paralysis. You've heard of analysis paralysis? Yeah, it's real and it sucks.

[00:00:57]And over time if you let it go on long enough, you start to like lose interest in the thing you were so excited about to begin with. So when it comes to producing that song you're working on, you were excited at one point, you got to a point where you felt stuck and some decisions need to be made and then you don't make those decisions and you think, "Maybe I'll just start that new show on Netflix tonight instead of figuring out that song." And then that continues and it's been 3 months and you haven't opened up your system. That's no fun.

[00:01:28]That's not really what you want. So today I want to share with you how to think about specifically producing, meaning what tracks am I going to record next to get this song from started and on in some form of completion all the way to the finish line where I say, "Shoot, this is great. I'm excited about this. Let's get this mixed and released ASAP." That's where we're going today and I brought visual aids. Quick update, I know I mentioned several videos back I'm working on a new song of my own that the original plan was to release it today. I'm pushing that back a week or two.

[00:02:01]I made the decision to push it back because I actually want to mix the song as a part of a workshop for my VIP members. And that needed to be pushed back into the next month to make that happen. So, giving myself a little more time because I'm not quite ready. I actually full honesty, I have not recorded the tracks on top of the drums that I've gotten back from Stewart. So, I am behind and there's a lesson here by the way. Set deadlines, work towards them, and then if you miss them, great. Reset them and keep going. Like, I'm all for meeting the deadline, but as as we all know, life happens, things happen, situations happen, priorities change.

[00:02:38]I've had some things come up in the last week that have taken priority and I'm completely happy with that. It means it meant this song got pushed back a few weeks, totally fine. It's actually going to end up being better overall for me, for my members, for my business, for the music. It's going to be great. Um but I had to make those decisions. the sit down and make that decision this morning before I could get this video done and move forward on several key projects.

[00:03:00]So, the the name of the game today is make decisions. Indecision needs to be avoided at all costs. Go ahead and make the decision. The thing I find a lot of the source of my own anxiety are decisions that I've decided not to make. Emails that I leave in my inbox for weeks cuz I don't want to make the decision about whether I want to do that thing, whether to say yes or no to that opportunity, what my reply to that person's going to be.

[00:03:25]And that sits and our brain just kind of holds it and just kind of in a lot of ways our brain thinks I should be working on that 24/7. And if you have a bunch of those in a lot of different areas of your life, the garage, I need to do that thing in the garage, I need to fix that thing downstairs, I need to do that project for my wife, I need to finish that song.

[00:03:42]Your brain just kind of freaks out and says, "Well, I got a lot of stuff that's undone in my brain." So, let's make some decisions. Even just the decision to put it on the calendar for a certain time in the future is better than letting it sit undone and the stress that that can cause. You may not realize it, you may not recognize that's what it is, but for me at least, indecision is a big source of anxiety. All right, let me show you how I think through production. Here's the situation, you're working on a song, you've got some things recorded, you need to record more tracks to get it to the finish line, but you don't know what to record. You're sitting there thinking, well, what do I record next?

[00:04:18]Now, you can go through and just record a bunch of spaghetti and see what sticks. That's a valid approach, sometimes that's really fun, but you might be in a situation where you don't want to record a bunch of stuff only to get rid of most of it and keep the two things that you like. Maybe you just want to make some progress. How would you go about thinking through that? Or let's say you have a client and they're saying, we have this afternoon to finish producing the song. What are we going to record? How do you answer that question? In your own mind, how do you know where to go next musically for the song? Now, you may think there is no answer to this question, you just have to feel it. Okay, maybe some people work that way, but there's actually kind of a tangible way that I go through and I think about this. I want to share that with you today. So, every track that I record has at least one of these three jobs.

[00:05:03]And every [snorts] track you record will do at least one of these jobs and potentially maybe multiple, but it at least has one. So, the first job and probably one of the most important jobs is rhythm. This track's primary job is to create and maintain and sustain a steady rhythm. Who does that? Well, drums and percussion, for sure, right?

[00:05:25]But also, there's this idea of the rhythm section.

[00:05:30]So, kind of traditional band terminology, these are like drums, bass, guitar, the rhythm guitar, the drums and the bass and maybe the rhythm keyboard. We're just kind of all blocking out chords, we're framing the song, we're setting the groove of the song. For these, their primary job is rhythm, but you could also make the case for their their secondary job is the second one up here, whoops, which is harmony.

[00:05:58]So, while the drums' primary job is to handle rhythm, percussion handle rhythm, the bass player and the rhythm guitarist, for example, the rhythm section, their job is to do a little bit of both. So, their primary job is probably a little more harmonic in nature. Let's play the right chords, but then let's also play them at a proper rhythm that works for the song.

[00:06:22]Okay? So, what are the some things we think about when we think about harmony?

[00:06:24]We think about for sure we think about chords, the chord progression, the chord chart, right? Which relates to the rhythm section.

[00:06:32]I like to think about voicing.

[00:06:36]I've played that guitar the same way at the same fingering. Is there another voicing I can do that gives me something different harmonically than what I already have?

[00:06:44]Another way of thinking about that is frequencies.

[00:06:48]So, the idea here is if everybody has one job, we've talked about two of those jobs thus far.

[00:06:55]Within that job, we don't want every rhythm instrument playing the exact same rhythm the entire length of the song.

[00:07:02]That's where things get kind of boring.

[00:07:03]Or we don't just want everybody just playing chords and not doing anything else that's maybe kind of interesting. That's where a lot of people get stuck. Most people stop This is a stop sign.

[00:07:19]here, where they've recorded basically a rhythm section, a bunch of tracks just playing the chord chart for the song. That's fine. That can work. To me, that's a good start to production, but the element that's missing is melody.

[00:07:35]So, if you think of like the three components of music, melody, harmony, and rhythm, every track in my session has to do at least one of those jobs if not more than one. So, when I think of melody, I think in terms of lead parts.

[00:07:49]Like lead vocal, lead guitar, solos, things like that. I also think in terms of hooks.

[00:07:57]Very common phrase in Nashville. What's the hook? They talk about it in songwriting, but also musically. What is the hummable part? What is something in this song that goes from being just playing a chord progression over and over to being something musical, something I could listen to and then I walk away humming that part. That is very much a melodic element. So, when we're thinking about each of these elements, everybody has a primary job.

[00:08:19]My rhythm guitar primary job is rhythm and harmony. Play the chords at a rhythm that works.

[00:08:26]But, I also might throw in a riff, which is just another word for a hook, in there on my rhythm guitar part. It might be playing ba da da ba da da ba da da ba da da ba da da ba da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da and then it goes back to just playing chords. That little rhythm is nice, it's tasty, which means my guitar track is dipping its toe into all three of these categories. The more you can have some crossover, generally speaking, the more interesting your music's going to be. But, if if you find yourself only Let me use the uh this tool here.

[00:08:56]Only hanging out in this world, your music will end up being fairly boring, fairly repetitive. If it's just a bunch of different instruments all playing the same exact rhythm and the same exact chord progression with nothing happening melodically, that gets old pretty quickly. Or, if there's not enough variation among these things.

[00:09:17]That's the big way to like level things up. I've got a bunch of things playing rhythm. How can I change up or vary the rhythm of different instruments to make it more interesting? So, if everybody's If the drums are going boom got boom boom got and then there's a bass going doom ba doom boom.

[00:09:34]That's cool, same rhythm, that works.

[00:09:36]Maybe there's a guitar going boom ba doom badum badum badum badum kind of the same rhythm as well, not quite but close.

[00:09:42]If I bring in a keyboard that goes that could be cool, too. But now we've got to like four parts all playing the same rhythm. Cool, but now at this point I've doubled that rhythm enough times.

[00:09:54]It's got some impact to it. Might be cool to have something doing something different. So maybe there's a clean guitar that instead of going a clean guitar goes Something simple or badap badap badap badap badap badap badap badap badap badap badap right? Think about like I think about like funk records. Where there's all these different instruments or like you can go look at like a lot of old like Stevie Wonder stuff.

[00:10:24]And then there's another part that comes in and it's like And then drums are going >> [snorts] >> And then bass is walking along with or bass maybe just doing straight quarter notes. They're all straight quarter notes. They're all introducing different elements of rhythm to the song. Now, everything I just said had elements of harmony and melody to it as well, which is cool. But within each of these frameworks, within each of these categories, the name of the game here is how can we add in variations?

[00:10:58]How can we make things a little bit different? Sorry, you can't see that. A little bit different. So that it's not just a big homogeneous all playing the same thing. In Nashville, they call that um an all skate. Where everybody just comes in everybody just kind of plays the same thing. Can be great for sections of a song, for parts of the song where everybody's kind of playing the same thing, kind of a unison aspect to it. Super cool. But if that's all your song is from downbeat to the end of the song, it can be kind of boring. So if you're feeling like, man, this just feels like it's okay, it sounds fine, technically sounds good, I recorded it all well, it's just not that interesting. Chances are you don't have enough variations in these different areas. So, maybe you've just got a bunch of everybody playing the same rhythm.

[00:11:43]Maybe everybody's playing in the same harmony, the same frequency range, the same voicing, the same frequencies, the exact same chords with the exact same inversions. Maybe there's some changes we can make there. Maybe there's a guitar that adds, you know, a major seventh to the chord that adds this whole new element that wasn't there in any of the other tracks, and it makes things really interesting and takes it to another level. Those are the variations that I'm talking about. So, when you're thinking, "Well, what do I do now?"

[00:12:08]Pick an instrument that you feel kind of excited about playing, you think it might work, and then think in terms of what is this going to play rhythmically, what is it going to do harmonically, and if and when will it play any sort of a melodic piece. If you can find a way to feed little bits of those variations into everything you record, I think you'll discover, I know you'll discover, that your music starts to take on a whole new quality, starts to feel really interesting, and you're introducing another skill set of decision-making into the process. Cuz now, instead of just saying, "I'm going to record guitar and play the chord chart." you're saying, "I'm going to record a rhythm guitar that's going to have a slightly different rhythm from what I did before, and I'm going to try it with a little bit different voicing." And you're going to record that, and then in the middle of the take you might say, "Ooh, it'd be cool if I played this little rhythm this little melody right here." Ba da da da da da back into the chord progression.

[00:12:56]So, you added in a little melodic variation to go along with the existing rhythmic and harmonic variations.

[00:13:01]Everybody has a primary job, but it's okay to dip into the other ones occasionally or as much as possible.

[00:13:07]Now, the only downside is you could potentially get too busy with the production.

[00:13:13]To me, that's a better alternative than something that's boring. Something that's too busy, we can pull back. If it feels hectic, you maybe went too far and had too many variations, but otherwise, most people I interact with, most of the clients that I work with, they're airing on the side of it being on the boring side. I'm saying, "Hey, let's bring something interesting. Let's bring something new into this to make it more interesting." That doesn't mean we don't have some tracks that just do the rhythm section and the chord thing, but to me that's the starting point. And then what can we add on top of that that really cranks in some harmonic and melodic elements to make this super interesting and fun for the listener. Now, I can already hear the pushback in the comments and maybe you're thinking about this as well. Joe, you can't turn art into some sort of a spreadsheet with formulas and you have to like check all of these boxes. Sure, you can.

[00:14:02]You You have a certain number of ways you like to play a C major chord.

[00:14:07]You could literally put that on a spreadsheet. I play it here, I play it here, I play it here, I play it there.

[00:14:12]That's just information. That's just true. I've just applied that same idea to the way that I produce. And it all comes from not me sitting down thinking, "How shall I invent a system for producing?" No, it's of all the songs I've listened to in my lifetime, the ones that I love the most, what did they do that makes me love them? And there's lots of answers to that question. First, from just the song and the performance itself, but then from a production standpoint, what are they doing?

[00:14:38]Especially, what are they doing that I don't naturally do when I first got into music production? My stuff sounded kind of predictable and boring, their stuff sounded interesting, so I started to study. What is the difference? And I realized, "Hmm, slowly over time, there's a lot more little melodies going on in there. It's not just straight chords, it's chords with melodies or chords that play melodies in between chords or there's a There's a track playing the chord, but then there's these tracks over here that are just doing simple little Not virtuoso Nothing like that. Just like And it makes all the difference in the world. So, you don't have to be a virtuoso. You don't have to be some sort of music theory genius. You just have to be able to recognize differences in rhythm, differences in harmony and frequency, and differences in melody. If If can do those things, which fun fact, everyone can, then you can start to develop this production muscle where everything's not homogeneous, everything's not the same. And I've just given you kind of uh I've put to words maybe the thing that you've always felt for music that you love, so you can start to find ways to practically apply that to your music.

[00:15:39]Now, do I am I sitting there every time I sit down to record thinking, "All right, now I have 17 things that have rhythmic elements, 13 things that have harmonic elements. Ah, I need a melodic element."

[00:15:49]No, it's not that nerdy, it's not that precise, but these are kind of the the way my brain is thinking in terms of like almost like a budget.

[00:15:57]If I've got if I've spent too much in the rhythm category, then I probably need to spend some in the other categories as well. It's a bad budget cuz you're just spending more, but you get the idea. If I've got a bunch of stuff in one category, how can I add a little bit of taste in the others? For in terms of priority, you there's a limit to how much melody you can add, right? And then there's a limit to how many different kind of harmonic and frequency variations you can have. And then rhythmically, rhythm's probably the one that you can do the most with. But you'll just think in terms of this little triangle next time you go to listen to your favorite music and notice all the different ways your favorite artists already do this. And then incorporate little bits of that into your next song. It's going to be really fun. If you like stuff like this, you'll love my VIP membership. Link in the description. It's a community of people just like you aspiring to make incredible music in a home recording studio, and they're doing it. My VIP members are making incredible music all the time. I'd love for you to come be a part of it. And when you join, you'll get instant access to a brand new workshop we just did on getting it right at the source. The third day, we talked all about being the producer, which is all about this kind of stuff and a bunch more stuff that I couldn't get into today. Come check it out. Link in the description. Thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next one.