“X” is the most recent single I’ve released as HGM Moe Ji One. The track was written in Cairo, recorded in Dubai, mixed and mastered in Riyadh. Three cities, six weeks, one song. Process notes in case they’re useful to anyone else trying to make music while running multiple businesses.
Cairo — the writing
The song started as a voice memo on a flight back to Cairo. Two-line hook in Arabic, half a verse in English, no production. I sat with it for nine days at my brother’s place in Maadi, just walking. The discipline was: don’t open the DAW yet. Most songs die in the production phase before the writing phase is finished. I forced myself to lock the lyrics and the topline melody on guitar before opening Logic.
Dubai — the recording
Three days at a Dubai studio I’ve worked at for years. Day one: scratch vocals, basic drum programming, sketch the arrangement. Day two: real vocals, the moment the song clicks or doesn’t. Day three: layers, ad-libs, the call-and-response background vocals that make the chorus breathe. Vocal mic was the U 87 I always default to; the dynamic for the rap section was an SM7B for grit.
Riyadh — the mixing
Mixed at home in Riyadh over four weeks of evenings and weekends, two hours at a time. Mixing-while-tired is how you ruin a record. I track work in 25-minute blocks; when ear fatigue hits, I stop. The mix went through nine versions before I sent it to my mastering engineer. Most of those versions were undoing things rather than adding things.
The production decisions
Three deliberate choices:
- Kept the room mic on the lead vocal at 12% wet. Sounds wrong on its own; sounds alive in the mix.
- Side-chained the bass to the kick at 4 dB. Subtle. Makes the low end actually translate on phone speakers.
- Recorded the oud sample at 44.1 kHz from a friend’s analog tape instead of using a sample library. The artefacts are the character.
What I’d do differently
Two regrets:
- I should have cut a 30-second loop two weeks before release for the TikTok / Reels rollout. The release plan and the production plan need to be the same plan.
- I should have re-recorded one verse in a different headspace. There’s a take I lived with too long; by the time I noticed, the budget for re-recording had moved to the next project.
The release
Distributed via DistroKid to all platforms. Spotify pre-save campaign for the two weeks pre-release. Cost breakdown of an independent release in 2026 here. The track did what it was supposed to do — opened the door for the next conversation, which is a body of work.
The throughline
The cities aren’t accidents. The song is a product of the route I take through life. The geography is the genre, and that’s the thesis I’m building the rest of the catalogue on.
Working on a record across timezones? Trade notes with me.