How To Finish A Music:

It's a fairly intuitive and matter of personal taste thing to choose sounds/samples, program patches and sequence/loop sounds, but the next steps, although none of this is bound by any 'rules', can be subject to certain common sense reasonings for how certain processing is set up;

The recording chain:
- generally its fair to say you want to do the stereo/mid-side placement first, since any processing or effects which has an effect on the stereo image would other wise be undone by this if it happened later - the exception being when you want something like a bass or sub to be pure mono and you need to avoid accidentally applying stereo widening or similar from other devices.
- The next item sense dictates to apply is any eq - items like filters and distortions and delays/verbs will accentuate the particular parts of the frequency spectrum you pull to the forfront if they follow on - gain, with an exception, if filters or distortions or whatever are gonna be too much effect on certain frequencies then eq needs to be after to control these things.
- Distortions make sense to be placed next since the filters tend to operate to pull out or hide the frequencies you do/dont want that were added as harmonics of the distortions - again, you may find exception if you need more harmonic content introduced after a filter has removed some.
- Filtering can be simplified down to two main categories - shaping/sculpting sound, and boosting/removing particular frequencies to make things fit a purpose; it generally follows that you'd weant to sculpt a sound before, for example, removing top end to produce a bass out of it.
- Next would be any phasers/flangers since they tend to affect the whole frequency spectrum and sound muddy or lacking if processeced through the earlier parts of a chain, excepting when they introduce too many extra harmonics and need to be before eq or shaping filters.
- Finally, any delays on send/return would be applied [normally you want the whole sound to be affected by the effect] and likewise then the reverb since that would make more sense [usually] to be affecting the delay repeats as well as the initial sounds...

The mixdown chain:
- I tend to keep my mixdown chains relatively simple, preferring to fix things at recording chain stage wherever possible. as a result, once levels for each track are balanced as the song and tastre dictate, the first thing to do is, if necessary, reduce gain of the whole master output by maybe 10 - 12 dB to give some room for eq, compression and any overall effects to work; this wont affect much in the final export since the limiter will make up any needed final gain.
- Generally it makes sense to start with a dynamic EQ; eq first because any peaks or spikes in the frequency spectrum will need to be controlled by a multiband compressor following on and dynamic eq because the freq spectrum varies with time so no one setting is ideal for the entire music.
- a multiband compressor next to level off extreme peaks and troughs, and generally sculpt the output into a reasonably consistent gain output without totally destroying the dynamic content of the whole.
- finally, an intelligent limiter - something to ensure nothing peaks over the upper limit of loudness desired whilst bring the whole average up to the final desired output gain.
- n.b. i dont usually use any effects or further process in a mixdown chain, but if i'm making paerhaps, lofi hiphop or something with a BoC kinda feel, i might want to run the master output through a lofi bitcrush effect or reel-to-reel tape emulator - if so then these would be placed before the eq but after the reduction in gain to give headroom since they would also require some headroom to account for any introduced gain and yet need to be affected by the eq and compression.

It's worth me putting in a quick note:
- Gainstaging [a fancy word for getting the levels right whilst avoiding undesired clipping]. you need to be aware of it, how to do it and what not to do. though to be honest if it isnt fairly intuitively understood from the following explanation, you're in the wrong job. Pretty much all you need to do to get your gainstaging right at any stage or level of processing, whether between devices in the recording chain or approaching the final output limiter, is to avoid any clipping youre not intentionally using for effect/colour. this means you have to pay attention to the input and output levels of every single devicem, chain, channel/track, group and master out, ensuring they have both not been fed too hot a signal at input, have room for any gain they add at out put and are not pushing the next device down the line into the red - i.e. each thing may need gain reduction internally or exteranally depending on controls available to keep it outta the red. [this is why i like the mixdown chain to have the 10-12dB reduction in gain at the start - it accounts for the fact that the eq and multiband compressor will tend to add gain, so you need to leave room to avoid clipping, and after all, you have a limiter to bring final output gain back up anyways].

The mastering chain:
- you aint a mastering engineer, you aint got the gear and you dont know what youre doing - leave it to the pros [unless you are and you do in which case you dont need/want to be reading this anyhoo].
Any music you make good enough to be released by a label or any other outlet is gonna either pay for mastering to be done anyways or youre gonna know piece by piece basis that a particular thing is special as its been chosen so then pay for it to be mastered when the time comes.