Hey David/Move D hope your good. Thanks

Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is how, or whether to split up the musical creation part of song making to the mixing side.

I'd be interested to hear your take on it, do you actively separate them, do it all together and do you think there any pros and cons to either method?

Bests,
Charlie

dear charlie,
i have always worked both ways.
my main instrument is the guitar actually, so often i would "compose" on the guitar or the piano and then translate into electronics / synthesizers / sequencers. (and not tell anybody because in the 90s in techno guitars were still considered to be the devil...)
this would be typical for tracks that are buit on a chord progression like "soap bubbles" "dinner with q" "sf farewell" amd pretty much all the "conjoint" and "koolfang" stuff.
however, sonic science is master in electronic music - so, there are even more songs that wrre ignited by a sound and exploring with synths and samplers.
the only thing i don't like doing is composing on a laptop using vstis and then later produce them
properly - i lose interest, if the basic sounds are just substitutes for better sounds to be produced later. but for others this method seems to work well...
i hope this answers your question?

Thanks for your reply David,

it partly answers my question and is very interesting. What I meant by my question was; do you separate the creation side, with the mixing side as in eq'ing, balancing and processing (if you do that at all)

When making a song are you thinking about the mix or do you leave this till later down the line after it's jammed out? Are you processing everything and perhaps adding EQ or distortion say, before arranging your song or do you leave this till afterwards, or not do that at all?

I hope that's worded a bit more clearly on my side and again, thanks for your answer.

as i said, i did it both ways. for me it turned out that it makes more sense to immediately make the sound as close to the final mix as possible.
i've worked the other way - composing on an accoustic instrument like guitar or piano and then translate it into electronic music - obviously, when the compisiontal part is more important than the sound design. (in other words when the compostion itself is the track's motivation / inspiration). then it makes sense to me.
otherwise, i prefer to produce "the" sound as i go along with a track.
hope this answers your question?