Like games and software, the staff needed to make a song varies a lot.
If you want your [game, software, song, ...] to reach a certain level of polish and fame, you need a similar number of people working on it. Mixing, mastering, recording, composing. You need someone who's very good with sheet music and knowledgeable about all parts of an orchestra if you have any orchestral parts you want played on real instruments.
And so on.
Can I make a song in a week that'll impress a few tens of thousands people? Sure. People write in to me all the time saying "this is just what I needed!" They don't notice I banged it out in Ableton in an hour because it's what they needed. It's what I needed too, so it was easy to make it good enough. Just like you can make a game or a piece of software in a week that'll scratch a lot of people's itches even if it's not perfect.
Recently, I got back into photography, and it's the same. I can take a great picture on my own and impress a lot of people, but most famous photographers have a staff that rivals the biggest non-unicorn SV startups. Editors, lighters, second (or third) shooters, general A/V crew, marketing, office staff, etc.
If you want your [game, software, song, ...] to reach a certain level of polish and fame, you need a similar number of people working on it. Mixing, mastering, recording, composing. You need someone who's very good with sheet music and knowledgeable about all parts of an orchestra if you have any orchestral parts you want played on real instruments.
And so on.
Can I make a song in a week that'll impress a few tens of thousands people? Sure. People write in to me all the time saying "this is just what I needed!" They don't notice I banged it out in Ableton in an hour because it's what they needed. It's what I needed too, so it was easy to make it good enough. Just like you can make a game or a piece of software in a week that'll scratch a lot of people's itches even if it's not perfect.
Recently, I got back into photography, and it's the same. I can take a great picture on my own and impress a lot of people, but most famous photographers have a staff that rivals the biggest non-unicorn SV startups. Editors, lighters, second (or third) shooters, general A/V crew, marketing, office staff, etc.