› Forums › Music › Music Production › Mastering
- This topic has 24 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated November 7, 2012 at 10:39 pm by Pat McDonald.
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June 30, 2012 at 2:21 am #1053378
This Is a subject of some mystery to a lot of people who have never been through the process of getting tune mastered. Basically it’s getting a tune that’s already been made to sound as best, and as loud as it possibly can with what’s already there.
It takes many many years to achieve the “ear” of a mastering engineer.
Having your tune mastered by someone else also has other benefits. Mainly having a second person finalize what you may have numbed your ears to after x-amount of time spend on perfecting a tune.
I MUST stress, if you are planning on releasing a tune DO NOT try and master it your self unless you are a mastering engineer. If you just want to “make it louder” then apply no more then 3db of gain reduction from a good limiter/maximizer.
A master engineer will correct any tiny mistake you make in the mixdown process and make your tune really shine. They will use things like multiband compression and eq and limiting in a multiple stage process what really is impossible to do to best effect in a bedroom, as the acoustics of a master engineer’s studio will be of top quality and their equipment second to none (unless you pick the wrong mastering engineer).
A mastering engineer’s WORST nightmare is (and I quote) … “A perfect mix”, as they will have nothing to do to that tune.
So don’t think about mastering when making a tune, just concentrate on getting your mixdown good. 😉
June 30, 2012 at 2:56 am #1255483Mastering is something best learnt by experimentation – trying things and seeing how they sound – dont be afraid to do nothing to a track – sometimes it is not possible to do anything to a track apart from normalise the levels that makes it sound better. Dont think that you have to use an effect on it just because everyone else does – using effects for the sake of it results in shoddy music
June 30, 2012 at 3:11 am #1255486@Raj 485875 wrote:
Mastering is something best learnt by experimentation – trying things and seeing how they sound – dont be afraid to do nothing to a track – sometimes it is not possible to do anything to a track apart from normalise the levels that makes it sound better. Dont think that you have to use an effect on it just because everyone else does – using effects for the sake of it results in shoddy music
This can all be done in the mixing down stage though. If you want to learn to master tunes then go full out, try everything, see how it sounds, make sure you do it in a “sound” environment (and what I mean by that is acoustically neutral). All mastering is is fixing mixdown mistakes, so mix your tune amazingly, and it will not not need mastering. If you can get every sound in the tune “flush” on 0db where it matters and the rest in exactly the right place below with the right eq on everything in the right place in the stereo field … there’s NO NEED for any further alteration! What is what a mastering engineer will do.
If you’re listening to your tune and you are thinking “I really need this mastered” then you are wrong, what you need to do is GO BACK AN MIX IT AGAIN! The ONLY benefit to a good mixdown, with regard to mastering, is the superior equipment they will use to get the best out of the sounds presented to them. 99% of people’s tunes will benefit from a mastering engineer giving them the once over, and that 99% don’t have either the ear or the equipment to do it properly.
Now the likely hood of you getting your mix perfect isn’t very lightly. Even the top bods of music production don’t. Infact, they are more likely to get someone else to even mixdown their tune! You have to start at the base up, if you can’t get a mix right, forget about trying to master. Learn how to mix a tune and you’ll not need to worry about mastering. It’ll just be something that happens after and adds a little extra touch, as opposed to anything that really make or breaks your song.
It’s the mixdown what’s important!
A mastering engineer will sit there and assess your tune .. and will look for things like …
It’s too loud here … that sound is too shrill … the bass is lacking … I can hear a little bit of mud here in the tune …
ALL things what are problems with the mix in the first place.
If you can’t mix down a tune don’t worry about mastering, the first step is mixing down, I guarantee you EVERY mastering engineer has had many years experience, in some way or another, in the process of mixing down tunes before they got to where they are now.
June 30, 2012 at 5:25 pm #1255487I’ll get onto doing a mixdown guide (as best I can) in the next few days.
[EDIT]A bit late, but here it is … http://www.partyvibe.com/forums/music-production/52175-mixing-down-your-tune.htmlNovember 4, 2012 at 10:39 pm #1255488Ok so I found really really good open source guide by izotopes on self mastering ….
November 4, 2012 at 11:46 pm #1255477self master-what?
November 5, 2012 at 12:04 am #1255489bate
November 5, 2012 at 3:00 pm #1255495And there was me thinking this was a thread about using the Force for dark purposes…
… oh wait, it is. :weee:
November 5, 2012 at 3:02 pm #1255496@Raj 485875 wrote:
Mastering is something best learnt by experimentation – trying things and seeing how they sound – dont be afraid to do nothing to a track – sometimes it is not possible to do anything to a track apart from normalise the levels that makes it sound better. Dont think that you have to use an effect on it just because everyone else does – using effects for the sake of it results in shoddy music
Just so long as you save the project between “experiments”, I’d go along with that. It is not a very nice feeling to take somebody elses work and turn it into garbage irreversibly.
November 5, 2012 at 3:31 pm #1255490@Pat McDonald 503689 wrote:
Just so long as you save the project between “experiments”, I’d go along with that. It is not a very nice feeling to take somebody elses work and turn it into garbage irreversibly.
It doesn’t really work like that with modern day DAW’s, especialy If you are using software effects (as most people would be doing if they were mastering their own songs in their bedrooms).
It’s literally a matter of putting an effect/compressor/limiter etc. on the song, and then taking it off again if your experiments don’t yield a good result. The processing’s done “live” on the playback rather then hard-coded into the original sound file whilst you are working on it. You only set it in stone to .wav at the end, and even this can be changed as you only need to open up your project again in your daw and tweak/remove one of the things that wasn’t quite right then re-record.
Unless ofc you don’t have all you need in one DAW, then it’s a slightly different story as you’ll be bouncing down to .wav with some effects on and then applying more in another program, but you don’t really need to do this much with the amount of stuff you get as standard with DAW’s nowadays, and with the possibility of endless 3rd party plugins to use within your DAW there really is no need. Unless there’s something very specific I want to do that only one program can do I’ve never had to bounce down to .wav in the mastering process other then the final product (with the exception of dithering, what I use a different program for, but this is ALLWAYS the very last step).
You do however need to keep saving as you go along as much as possable encase of any crashes to avoid loosing work you’ve done.
In most proper mastering house’s things work differently ofc, and they would be using mainly hardware, so possibly would need to record in stages depending on how much and what processing was needed. There are some pure software mastering houses out there though I’ve heard.
November 5, 2012 at 3:58 pm #1255484One would hope the client would have a copy of the mixdown saved on their computer!
And pro mastering tends to be all about the expensive analogue equipment and having shit hot hearing.
November 5, 2012 at 4:20 pm #1255491^^ like cheese is implying and I said in my first post you’ll get much much better results by sending it off to a seasoned mastering engineer at a pro mastering house.
November 5, 2012 at 4:30 pm #1255494It’s not just about increasing the loudness, a mastering engineer should also make sure all the tracks fit together as a single unit, and balancing such that it sounds good on the widest range of systems. They will often have input into the track order, timing between tracks to make it work better as an album.
Multiband compression is undesirable and a last resort to clean up something that should have been fixed in the mix
November 5, 2012 at 4:34 pm #1255485If I was looking to master something for commercial release I wouldn’t even attempt it myself. I’d happily pay proper money to someone with the expertise and £££££s of hardware to listen to it with fresh ears and do a much better job than me.
November 5, 2012 at 5:21 pm #1255476remember also that radio stations increasingly use multiband compressors + a hard limiter (to keep the communications ministry happy especially when daytime shows on non dance stations often have a zoos worth of redline monkeys) and because radio receivers can be anything from small portable sets to hi fi equipment – so if your music is also intended to be played on radio don’t process it so hard the sound “fights” the processing and gets limited to the point it sounds like a 80s cassette recorder with automatic level control…
November 5, 2012 at 7:58 pm #1255492@Clusterfrog 503724 wrote:
It’s not just about increasing the loudness, a mastering engineer should also make sure all the tracks fit together as a single unit, and balancing such that it sounds good on the widest range of systems. They will often have input into the track order, timing between tracks to make it work better as an album.
Multiband compression is undesirable and a last resort to clean up something that should have been fixed in the mix
Yeah I’m only just learning about this properly myself, after reading that guide I posted I’ve found things I didn’t realize were used in mastering and will now stop trying to use them on my mixes and do it separately (If I self master). I know I shouldn’t of been using them really anyway, but it made it sound better, now I know why I shouldn’t of been doing it on the mix’s, and that’s cos it gets done at mastering stage not mixing.
November 6, 2012 at 10:49 am #1255497So, in cookery terms, it’s a bit like icing the cake.
You can’t ice and otherwise decorate a cake for eye candy appeal until you have mixed and baked the cake ingredients.
Something like that?
November 6, 2012 at 10:54 am #1255478Double post 🙁
November 6, 2012 at 11:10 am #1255479Reading this makes me wanna finsh one of my tracks, but unfortuantly my pirate copy of V station when into lock up when it discovered it had been cracked.(he was like no you did not pay for me, so you can’t play with me) and I have had to get an new copy of it. So all the presets for all my tracks that use Vstation have be reset 🙁
The new version of it is far more stable though.
November 6, 2012 at 11:11 am #1255480Pat do you want a copy of FL studio or something to have a fiddle around with, you might enjoy it 🙂
November 6, 2012 at 11:14 am #1255498@thelog 503931 wrote:
Pat do you want a copy of FL studio or something to have a fiddle around with, you might enjoy it 🙂
FL = Fairlight?
Nah, that’s OK mate. I’ve got plenty plenty plenty things to do right now.
Maybe some other time, but if I stop treading water, so to speak, there’s a fair chance of me sinking and drowning.
November 6, 2012 at 11:16 am #1255481November 6, 2012 at 11:19 am #1255482@Pat McDonald 503932 wrote:
FL = Fairlight?
Nah, that’s OK mate. I’ve got plenty plenty plenty things to do right now.
Maybe some other time, but if I stop treading water, so to speak, there’s a fair chance of me sinking and drowning.
Fruity loops studio, it’s probably the most basic but decent features. I still use it. Just try it out pat it will be fun we can make a project together. Even if you just record some vocal samples (random quotes etc) and we granulise it. Keep it in mind.
November 6, 2012 at 11:25 am #1255499@thelog 503935 wrote:
Fruity loops studio, it’s probably the most basic but decent features. I still use it. Just try it out pat it will be fun we can make a project together. Even if you just record some vocal samples (random quotes etc) and we granulise it. Keep it in mind.
Well, now have managed to get a little lappy working so could probably get it going on that. At least I know what to look out for. Ta!
November 7, 2012 at 10:39 pm #1255493@thelog 503935 wrote:
Fruity loops studio, it’s probably the most basic but decent features. I still use it. Just try it out pat it will be fun we can make a project together. Even if you just record some vocal samples (random quotes etc) and we granulise it. Keep it in mind.
I AM NOW SPEAKING THROUGH A RING MODULATOR
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