The music pre-production checklist
Pre-production is deciding everything that can be decided before the session — so production day spends its energy on execution, not on choices.
All four stages — songwriting, production, mix and mastering — every step named, with the exit test per stage. Enter your email and it downloads right away; it also saves you a founder-price spot for when paid plans open.
Here's the pattern pre-production exists to break: you open a session to produce and end up deciding — what key, which drums, how long the second verse runs. Decisions burn a different fuel than execution, and a session that alternates between them finishes neither. Pre-production moves every decision that doesn't need the DAW open into its own pass, before the session. The steps below are in working order.
1 · Close the songwriting
EXIT TEST: the song holds attention played on one instrument, no production.
- Key and scale chosen; every part written inside them
- Chord progression finished and satisfying played solo
- Main melody singable from memory after one listen
- Song structure mapped: intro, verses, builds, drop or chorus, break, outro
- Emotional intention stated in one sentence — you know what this song is for
- A rough demo captured, however ugly — voice memo over a loop counts; memory doesn't
This is the songwriting stage's own exit test, and it's non-negotiable: producing an unwritten song means designing sounds for parts that will get cut. If several of these boxes are open, the honest move is the full production checklist, stage one, before anything below.
2 · Choose the references
EXIT TEST: two or three commercial tracks chosen that answer "what should this end up sounding like?"
- 2–3 reference tracks picked in your genre, whose sound you trust
- One sentence per reference on what it's a reference for (drums, vocal space, arrangement energy)
- References imported into the project or a playlist — reachable in one click during the session
- Rough tempo and key relationship to your song noted, so comparisons aren't apples to oranges
3 · Prep the session
EXIT TEST: tomorrow's session could start with a creative move, not a setup task.
- Project created from your template, named properly (song title — not "untitled_final_2")
- Tempo and key set in the DAW before anything is recorded
- Track skeleton laid out: drums, bass, music, vocals, FX buses — named and colored
- The demo imported on a muted track as the map
- Save/version habit decided: when you'll save-as, and what versions get named
4 · Pre-select the palette
EXIT TEST: production can start without opening a browser, a store, or a 40-minute preset safari.
- Drum kit / drum samples chosen against your reference's drum sound
- Main instruments shortlisted — two or three candidates per role, not thirty
- Bass sound direction decided (who owns the low end: bass or kick, and when)
- Any vocal chain or recording needs identified — mic, space, session date if someone else sings
- Sounds you already know you love saved into the project, so the session starts from taste, not from scratch
The exit test for pre-production as a whole: could production start tomorrow with zero open questions? If a question remains — a key, a length, a drum sound — it's cheaper to answer it today, outside the session, than tomorrow inside it.
Pre-production is stage one done honestly. The Workpad tracks all four.
Songwriting, production, mix and mastering — every step named per project, with the exit test that closes each stage. One active project free · $4.99 one-time unlocks full features.
Open The Engineer's Workpad