I've done entire albums for others, about 8 of them. They brought the instrument or voice, idea, songs, and I did the rest, arrangement, programming, recording, backing tracks and mixing. But all of it with them directing the work right over my shoulder. I hate to think I did it good while they are rolling their eyes behind my back. Also means I don't suggest myself to them, I let them decide who to go to. Those jobs weren't high-profile stuff but .. it does get you alot of taste for what pitfalls to expect up the road if you try it.
When I was 14-15, I did 3 full length musicals all on my own, in the kinda classic rogers & hammerstein style, mostly orchestra and some with 4 piece rhythm section behind, about 20 pieces per musical. I put it all down as notation with a digital piano and stuff, and used Steinberg Pro 24 with a Midex on Atari to get it into life with the help of a number of roland and emu rack synths that I had. Some songs I taped onto cassette tape (which was the medium to use at the time). I didn't have any aspirations with it other than to do it and live in that world on my own, so it never made it out to the public, besides friends and family.
I haven't even seen it or heard it since I was 18 .. hm ...
At that time, this was a part of my figuring out that desirable achievements in life could be differentiated in at least two ways:
- Achieving something by doing what you already can do, just doing alot of it.
- Needing actually become better to be able to pull it off at all.
Like ... jumping 15 feet in long jump, that's difficult ... in the sense that you can't achieve it by doing what you already can do many times over. You need to step what you do up.
But doing a full record all on your own, or musical, usually does not mean that you have to become better at what you do. It just requires you to do what you do alot, to produce the amount of material.