So it usually starts by finding a cool sample (I have like 8 terabytes haha)
or coming up with a cool melody on whatever instrument.
Then I just go, like for hours until it's basically done.
Outside world doesn't exist during that lol.
Whether I find a cool sample or come up with a melody,
it goes straight in to FL (most of the time) as quickly as possible.
Mixing and arrangement is usually done in parallel as the projects grows.
Final touchups and tweaks I do later or the next day.
When that's done it's time for mastering;
I first gain-stage to make sure nothing clips,
usually some form of tape simluation / saturation comes in here.
Oh, and EQ-ing of course.
Final steps I do differently for each song,
Sometimes I just slap on a soft limiter in Audacity and normalize.
Other times I bring it over to Ardour and use the awesome Calf compressors for limiting.
I always take off below 20 Hz and above 20 kHz before final limiting.
And I always normalize to -1dB true peak (the standard that all the platforms want).