An album, in the musical sense of the term, refers to the recording of an artist or a group of artists comprising several titles, and never before released to the public.
SOUND TAKING
It's D-Day. You're ready, so now you need to get the mics out and record your tracks.
It is during this phase that the instruments are recorded, usually successively. Recording instruments one after the other helps keep more control over the performance, and helps prevent musicians from disturbing each other. It could happen.
It also allows you to focus on picking and placement of the mic to capture the best possible sound from one instrument at a time and therefore avoid dispersal.
Spend some time experimenting with two or three different mics and / or placement, and making sure you have the best possible sound. Once in the box, you can't go back. If you have mediocre tracks to mix, you're going to spend more time fixing flaws than improving what already sounds good.
EDITING
The tracks are recorded. Now is the time to prepare them for the mix. This phase is quite painful, because we don't really make music, but we have to go through it.
Editing consists of cleaning up the tracks to better mix them. You will cut the silences, adjust the timing of the tracks, fade in and fade out to take care of the transitions, tune the vocals a bit, etc ...
It's tedious, but it will let you mix clean and clear tracks, without clicks and pops, without noise from amplifiers, without the coughing fits of the singer, etc ...
Freed from potential distractions, you will be able to move on to the mix.
In conclusion, a music album is a phonographic production distributed to the public in the form of a CD, vinyl record or a set of digital files presented together, and bringing together a collection of titles from one or more composers, a singer , a group or a musician orone or more mix (es) of one or more DJ (s).