Appendix G: The Producer's Checklists

This is the working appendix — the one you keep open in a second window, or print and tape beside the screen. The Chapter 39 capstone sends you here when it says "run the checklist," because a finished record is not one big decision; it's a few hundred small ones made in the right order. The list is how you stop forgetting the boring ones. Pilots fly thousands of hours and still read the checklist before takeoff, not because they don't know how to fly, but because knowing isn't the same as doing it every time under pressure. Same job here.

Two rules before the boxes. First, these are stage gates, not a script — work top to bottom within a stage, but skip what your song doesn't have (no live drums? skip the room-mic line). Second, the floor under almost every move in this book holds here too: matched-loudness A/B, or it didn't happen. Any processing checkbox that adds level is lying to you until you've level-matched the before and after. Tape that one to the top of the monitor.

A printable convention for the whole appendix: - [ ] is a thing to do; the bold lead in each box names the why so you can decide whether your song needs it. Numbers are starting points — habits, not laws. Your ears sign off, not the page.

Session Setup

Get this right once and every later stage inherits a clean house. Chapter 2 and Chapter 6 built this.

• [ ] 48 kHz / 24-bit project — 24-bit for the tracking headroom (a quiet take isn't a ruined take), 48 kHz as the modern default; pick once and stay consistent across the project
• [ ] Project saved to its own dated folder, not loose on the desktop — 2026-03_static-bloom/
• [ ] Naming convention decided before track one: VOX-lead, VOX-harm-hi, KICK, 808, not Audio 04
• [ ] Template loaded — your 6-bus skeleton (DRUMS, BASS, SYNTHS, GTR, VOX, FX), color code, default routing already wired
• [ ] Sample rate matched across interface, DAW, and any external gear — mismatches cause pitch/speed surprises
• [ ] Backup location confirmed — at minimum a second drive or cloud sync; a song that lives in one place is a song you're about to lose
• [ ] Tempo and key set in the project (96 BPM, A minor for "Static Bloom") so grid, MIDI, and tempo-synced FX agree from the start

Recording Day

Capture is the one stage you can't fix later. A great mix can't rescue a bad take; a great take survives a mediocre mix. Chapters 7, 8, 11, and 12 are the long version.

• [ ] Levels: peaks landing roughly −12 to −6 dBFS, averages near −18; leave headroom, never chase 0 dBFS
• [ ] Headphone mix built for the performer, not the engineer — they need to hear themselves comfortably to perform well
• [ ] Mic position locked and noted (distance, angle, height) so you can match it on a punch-in tomorrow
• [ ] Room checked — kill the HVAC, fridge, phone; listen to the space in the cans before the first take
• [ ] Slate every take — say the take number, or number the files; future-you comping at 1 a.m. will thank you
• [ ] 4+ full takes of anything important, even when take 2 felt perfect — options are free now and expensive later
• [ ] Marked-up lyric/part sheet as you go — circle the keeper phrases live; that's half your comp already done
• [ ] Headphone bleed and pop/plosive check on the lead vocal — re-angle or add a pop filter before, not after

Editing Pass

The invisible art between recording and mixing. Done right, nobody notices; done wrong, everybody does. Chapter 15.

• [ ] Comp the best phrases into one composite take — performance first, then fix the seams
• [ ] Tighten timing by feel, nudging late/early notes — but do not grid-flatten; quantizing the life out of a take is how you get a robot
• [ ] Pitch correction transparent — fix the sour notes, keep the human ones; if you can hear the tuning, you went too far
• [ ] Fades and crossfades on every edit point — a crossfade is cheaper than a click, and clicks are forever
• [ ] Noise cleanup — breaths tamed (not deleted), chair creaks and lip smacks gated or edited out of the gaps
• [ ] Phase checked on any multi-mic source after editing — moving one region can break the relationship you set in Chapter 12

Arrangement

A mix problem is usually an arrangement problem wearing a disguise (the Chapter 20 threshold). Fix it here, cheaply, before EQ tries to fix it expensively. Chapter 16.

• [ ] Mute test — solo-out each part for a section; if muting it changes nothing, it's not earning its slot
• [ ] Energy curve maps across the song — intro through outro should go somewhere, not sit flat
• [ ] Contrast built in — the chorus only feels big if the verse made room; subtract from the verse to lift the chorus
• [ ] Every section answers "what's new here?" — a new element or a removed one keeps the listener leaning in
• [ ] Frequency crowding flagged — two parts living in the same band in the same section is a future mud committee; thin one now

Mix Prep / Static Balance

The most important 90 minutes of the mix, and the one people skip. Get the relationships right with faders before you touch a plugin. Chapter 20.

• [ ] Route the 6 buses — every track lands in DRUMS, BASS, SYNTHS, GTR, VOX, or FX; nothing floating to the master alone
• [ ] Fader-from-silence — pull everything down, bring up the most important element first, then balance around it
• [ ] No processing yet — balance, panning, and arrangement only; the static mix should already sound like a song
• [ ] Mono check — collapse to mono and confirm the balance survives; if the vocal vanishes in mono, you have a problem to solve before, not after, the mix
• [ ] Rough reference level set against a pro track at matched loudness so your ears have a target

Gain Staging

Levels are relationships, not absolutes — headroom is a workflow (the Chapter 21 threshold). Chapter 21.

• [ ] Track averages near −18 dBFS — gives every plugin the level it was voiced for and keeps the summing clean
• [ ] 2-bus headroom healthy — peaks around −6 dBFS pre-master, leaving room for the mastering stage to work
• [ ] Kill every red light — no clipping on any channel, bus, or the master; a red light is a fact, not an opinion
• [ ] Gain before the chain, not the channel fader, when feeding a level-dependent plugin (compressor, saturator)
• [ ] Faders living near unity (0 dB) where you can ride them — a fader pinned at the top or bottom has nowhere to go

EQ

Cut the mud, make a home for each instrument, and prove every move at matched loudness. Chapter 22; the frequency map is Appendix A.

• [ ] High-pass discipline — roll off the rumble each source doesn't need; only the bass instruments truly own the sub
• [ ] Cut the 200–400 Hz pileup — 1–3 dB on the two or three biggest mud donors, not 6 dB on one; it's a committee
• [ ] One instrument per pocket — when two parts fight, carve complementary holes so each owns its band
• [ ] Matched-loudness A/B on every move — boosts flatter you; level-match before you judge
• [ ] Sweep to find, then cut — boost-and-sweep locates the problem; the decision is a cut in the full mix, not in solo
• [ ] Two or three convictions per channel, max — six EQ cuts means you're EQing the sweep, not the song

Compression

Name the purpose of every compressor before you insert it, or you're just turning knobs. Compression shapes time, not only loudness (the Chapter 23 threshold). Chapter 23.

• [ ] Name the job per instance — "level the vocal," "punch the kick," "glue the drum bus"; one purpose each
• [ ] Attack/release by feel — fast attack tames transients, slow attack lets them punch through; set it to the song's pulse
• [ ] Drum-bus glue ~2–3 dB GR — gentle ratio, enough to make the kit breathe as one, not enough to pump (unless pumping is the sound)
• [ ] Vocal leveling so the quiet words sit and the loud words don't jump — more reduction, lower ratio, slow enough to breathe
• [ ] Makeup gain matched to bypass so you judge the compression, not the level it added
• [ ] Check for pumping you didn't ask for — release fighting the tempo is the usual culprit

Space

Three shared spaces, not thirty plugins. Depth is a decision, not an accident. Chapter 24.

• [ ] Three shared reverbs on sends — a tight room (~0.4 s), a plate (~1.8 s), and a long hall or tail for the moments that need air
• [ ] Pre-delay set so the reverb doesn't smear the transient — a few ms keeps the source up front and the space behind it
• [ ] Tempo-synced delays — eighth, dotted-eighth, or quarter locked to 96 BPM so echoes land with the groove
• [ ] Depth map drawn — what's up front (dry), what's mid-room, what's far back; reverb amount is your front-to-back fader
• [ ] Reverb high-passed and often low-passed — wet mud is still mud; keep the tails out of the 200–400 Hz zone

Width

LCR first, tricks second. A wide mix that collapses in mono isn't wide — it's broken. Chapter 25.

• [ ] LCR plan — what lives center (kick, snare, bass, lead vocal), what's hard left/right, what's in between and why
• [ ] Mono-compatibility verified — sum to mono and confirm nothing important phases away or disappears
• [ ] Doubles for width — real double-tracks panned wide beat a stereo-widener plugin every time
• [ ] Correlation meter glanced at — deep into the red means phase trouble waiting on a phone speaker
• [ ] Center the low end — sub and kick stay mono; stereo bass is the first thing club systems and earbuds punish

Color

Saturation is seasoning. Add harmonics for the right reasons, then re-check what they cost you. Chapter 26.

• [ ] Saturation dose, not a bath — a little on the vocal, bass, and drum bus for harmonic glue and audibility
• [ ] Re-check the mud after saturating — harmonics bloom in the low-mids; what you added up top can thicken 200–400 Hz
• [ ] 2-bus color subtle — tape or console flavor on the master is a whisper, not a statement
• [ ] Matched-loudness A/B — saturation adds perceived loudness and level; both flatter you
• [ ] Use saturation to make the 808 readable on phones (700 Hz–1.5 kHz harmonics) before you reach for a low-end boost

Automation

The move from a static mix to a living one. Automation is arrangement you perform. Chapter 27.

• [ ] Vocal rides ±1–2 dB by phrase — what the compressor couldn't catch, your hand does; every word sits
• [ ] Section lifts — a +0.5 dB nudge into the chorus, a pull-back in the verse; small moves, big feel
• [ ] Filter and FX moves automated — a riser's sweep, a delay throw on the last word of a line, a build into the drop
• [ ] Mutes automated for the mute-test subtractions you committed to in arrangement — let the song breathe
• [ ] Read the automation back start-to-finish once — an orphaned breakpoint is a surprise volume jump waiting to ship

Vocal Chain

The voice gets its own chapter because it gets its own chain, in order. Chapter 29.

• [ ] Subtractive EQ first — cut the mud (200–350 Hz) and any boxiness before you add anything
• [ ] De-ess before broad high-end — tame the esses surgically so an air boost doesn't weaponize them
• [ ] Serial compression — two gentle stages (a leveler then a fast catcher) beat one heavy squash; the reduction stacks invisibly
• [ ] Presence EQ only after the vocal is clean — +1–2 dB at 3–5 kHz costs half as much on a de-mudded voice
• [ ] Saturation for harmonics and density — a touch makes the vocal sit in the track, not float on top
• [ ] Throws on sends — delay/reverb thrown on phrase ends, not printed across the whole take
• [ ] Verify the vocal sits everywhere: full mix, low level, mono, and on the worst speaker in the house

Mix Troubleshooting

When something's wrong and you can't name it, diagnose before you reach. Fill the quick-form, then act. Chapter 30; the full symptom table lives there, the frequency map in Appendix A.

• [ ] Car test — the original sin from Chapter 1; if it falls apart in the car, the car is right
• [ ] Phone / single-speaker test — does the mix survive a tiny mono driver? The midrange carries the song
• [ ] Quiet test — at low level the balance, not the excitement, is what you hear; harshness survives quiet playback
• [ ] Ranked fix list written from the tests, then executed top-down — don't fix everything at once and lose the thread

Mastering

Quality control and translation, not magic sauce — and it can't fix a mix (the Chapter 31 threshold). Chapters 31–32.

• [ ] Corrective EQ first — gentle broad moves to fix tonal balance against references; surgical only if a real problem survived the mix
• [ ] Glue compression — 1–2 dB GR across the 2-bus to knit the master, slow and subtle
• [ ] Limit in stages — a little gain into a clean limiter, then more; one limiter slammed 6 dB sounds like one limiter slammed 6 dB
• [ ] A/B against references at matched loudness — turn the loud one down to compare tone, not volume
• [ ] Print specs: 24-bit WAV master, true-peak ceiling −1 dBTP, no clipping on the print
• [ ] Walk away and re-check tomorrow — ears at 11 p.m. and ears at 9 a.m. disagree, and morning ears win

Loudness QA

Streaming normalization ended the loudness war — dynamics are a choice again (the Chapter 33 threshold), because the platforms turn everything down to match. Chapter 33.

• [ ] Integrated LUFS measured with a real meter — not the peak meter, the loudness meter
• [ ] True peak ≤ −1 dBTP — gives lossy encoders (MP3, AAC) room before they overshoot into distortion
• [ ] Platform reality check — as of this writing, platforms change these: Spotify normalizes to roughly −14 LUFS, podcasts commonly target around −16 LUFS; a master much louder than the target just gets turned down, dynamics spent for nothing
• [ ] Compare loud and quiet at matched loudness — once normalized, the punchier master usually wins, not the squashed one
• [ ] Decide the target on purpose — a dynamic master and a loud master are both valid; pick one and own the tradeoff

Release Prep

The song is done; now make it deliverable. Chapter 35.

• [ ] Master + alt versions rendered — clean (radio) edit, instrumental, and any TV/sync version you might need later
• [ ] Metadata complete — title, artist, songwriter splits, contributors, genre, explicit flag
• [ ] ISRC and UPC assigned (your distributor issues them) — the fingerprints that track plays and sales
• [ ] Artwork to spec — square, high-resolution, no unlicensed images, no text that violates DSP rules
• [ ] 4-week lead time to the distributor — that's the window to land editorial playlist pitches before release day
• [ ] File names and versions sane — static-bloom_master_v3_-1dBTP.wav, not final_FINAL_2.wav

Split Sheet

Settle the money while everyone's still friends — at the session, in writing, before the song is a hit nobody agreed on. Chapter 36 (the Jaylen / Demi / Theo scene).

• [ ] Who — every contributor's legal name, role, and contact
• [ ] What — what each person contributed (wrote topline, produced, played guitar, sang)
• [ ] Percentages — the songwriting split that adds to 100%, agreed out loud and written down
• [ ] PRO affiliations and publishing info noted for each writer
• [ ] Signatures and date from everyone in the room — an unsigned split sheet is a conversation, not an agreement
• [ ] Keep master ownership separate from songwriting splits — they're two different pies, a distinction Chapter 36 makes carefully

A checklist is not a cage. The day you can run "Static Bloom" start to finish from memory and beat the list is the day you've earned your own — shorter, sharper, built from the mistakes only you keep making. Until then, read the boxes. Knowing the move and making it every time are different skills, and only one of them ships records.