Sound design
Sound design components include sound effects or SFX sound design, mixing, Foley sound design, dialogue, and music. Sound design is the final and most important element needed to create an immersive experience for the audience.
Music production
Music production encompasses the entire life cycle of a piece of music. It’s a multistage process that includes the conception of an idea, songwriting, composition, recording music, mixing, and mastering. While the process may seem long and daunting, knowing what happens at each stage can help start your music production journey.
Mixing
Mixing is a broad topic that deserves it's own piece, but the basis of the process is combining, balancing, and finessing individual project tracks after recording the elements of your song . Mix engineers are instrumental in deciding the levels of recorded tracks and have a variety of duties. This may include combining individual tracks, adding elements of music production to elevate the song, and balancing individual instruments so that they fit within the context of an entire song.
Mastering
Audio mastering is a more simple process than mixing, though it's an art form in itself. Professional mastering involves elevating an entire mix so that it sounds like a cohesive whole composition when put on a variety of playback systems. Mastering engineers work with a single file or multiple tracks depending on the musical composition. The process of mastering simply polishes the preexisting mix - therefore a bad mix cannot be transformed into a good master.