Mastering: Tips for Artists

Important things recording artists should know before they take their mixed songs to a mastering engineer

Category:

Education

Tags:

• music
• mastering
• tips
• audio
• mixing
• studio
• recording
• engineering
• song
• loudness
• level
• EQ
• compression
• limiter
• enhancement

[SonicFarmAudio]

In answer to CONTROVERSYRISING: I did master Jim Meyer's CD. It ended up being featured on Chapman stick players' main website for months and he had a huge success with it. Plus there are tons of samples of my mastering work at my site.  The link was given in the video. As far as the new trend of giving mastering engineers some separate files (like lead voc), it's not something I came up with. But I have to accommodate my clients' requests, even if I think they are weird.

[SonicFarmAudio]

Well you don't want to give your mastering engineer individual files from all tracks because that is done in the mixing process. Unless, of course, one person does both jobs. Individual tracks do need stuff like dynamics, EQ, harmonics, ambiance, whatever may be the case. I'm just saying do not apply any processing on your master output or stereo buss, whatever you call it.

[basskunst]

To me the most important advice in this video is the last one. I made that mistake once. The results were mediocre, even when the mixing engineer was good. Definitely will not do it again. A good result starts in front of the microphone. You can not expect mastering to solve problems that occurred during recording.

[CONTROVERSYRISING]

.. this is lame. These two are pretending to interview each other. I can't believe you two are telling people to give separate instrument tracks to the mastering engineer so he/she can fix a poor mix. Mastering is the "finishing" process of a recording. Adjusting EQ issues, adding stereo imaging if desired/needed and dynamic control with compression/limiting. If you had any skill you would have posted examples

[1407sound]

great vid, very helpful ...... cheers

[JamZamDesigns]

@Cryofax Mixing the individual parts of a track is made before the mastering :) Mastering basically means the processing of a whole rendered track, it's the final touches to get it as good as it possibly can be.

[Cryofax]

I'm a newb first off :) I have a question about the mastering source. Wouldn't it be better for the mastering engineer to be working with all the individual channels (parts) from the song so he can apply processing etc to individual parts? Since the engineer would prefer to work with the uncompressed/limited version, does having the premixed/rendered track limit what he can do to an individual instrument in the song? Or is it expected that the final mix handles that much beforehand?

[damienro0]

good ideas! would be awesome if you could do a video on resolving common problems in mixing and mastering

[RelicOnMiko]

Great great stuff and very timely. I'm experiencing a lot of the stuff you guys went over...looking to take my tracks from mix to master but because many engineers claim they "master" (putting an EQ on stereo bus) it has created a lot of confusion. I'm sure the same is true for other up and coming artists