The response to Broadjam offering mastering services has exceeded our expectations, to say the least. It’s incredibly gratifying to get comments from musicians who feel that mastering has truly taken their music to the next level (and sometimes beyond), but we’ve also found out that quite a few musicians don’t really understand what mastering is all about—to them, it’s just some magic process that, when done right, makes music sound better.
So we’re starting this blog to help de-mystify the mastering process, describe some specific techniques, and give some real-world advice. The better a musician understands what mastering can and cannot do, the easier it is to create a mix that’s optimized to take full advantage of the mastering process.
Mastering is all about taking a mix and enhancing it in every way possible, giving it more impact, definition, and polish. What makes mastering such a difficult process is that it’s all about using very subtle processing to make a huge overall difference. For example, if a song lacks presence, sometimes only 0.5dB of boost in the upper midrange will provide that presence—while 1.0dB of boost makes it sound shrill.
I’ve been doing mastering for many years, both on music and narration. My specialty has been classical music, which is in some ways even more demanding than rock and pop music because any mastering has to be totally transparent. But I have to say that doing mastering for Broadjam’s members has been my most satisfying mastering experience yet.
First of all, I realize that music is very personal and important to the artist. When someone hands over a track to me for mastering, it’s an honor. Of course, we do guarantee satisfaction, so there’s no real risk; but nonetheless, I appreciate that people trust me to do what I think is best for their music. It’s a compliment, a privilege, and an obligation that I take very seriously.
But the rewards are considerable, too. When I download a file, it’s like getting a Christmas present and opening it up to find out what’s inside! I’ve gotten everything from Disney-girl-band power pop, to potential soundtrack material from England, to highly evocative music from Norway, and even one track I’m convinced could become a country-rock standard. Amazingly, among the huge variety of cuts I’ve mastered so far, there hasn’t been one dud. I enjoy listening to all types of music and hearing new talent, so as you can imagine, this is a pretty cool gig for someone like me.
The best part of mastering, though, is the satisfaction of taking a “good” piece of music and making it “great.” This is a competitive world, and a musician needs every break possible. My goal is to present the artist’s music in the best possible way, and help improve the odds of success. There was one song I mastered where there were great guitar parts in the background, but they were buried in the mix. With a little effort (well actually a lot of effort, but that’s what mastering is all about) I was able to isolate and bring up those guitars so that they could really power the song. It made all the difference in the world, and the song came alive…when it comes to mastering, I live for those moments.
Okay, that’s enough of an introduction. See you next post!
Craig Anderton’s Mastering Blog: Do You Really Need Mastering?
One of the common questions I get is “If a mix is really good, then why would mastering be necessary?” And that’s a valid question, because if the mix sounds good, then that’s all you should need…right?
In theory, doing a great mix would eliminate the need for mastering. But this is rarely the case; the analogy I’d use is putting dressing on a salad. You could put a certain amount of dressing on each piece of lettuce, tomato, etc.; when combined, you should have the same results as putting dressing on the entire salad. This would be like optimizing every track, and assuming that when put together, something would sound “mastered.” But in my experience, salads are best when tossed, and I’ve never heard a mix—no matter how good—that couldn’t benefit in some way from quality mastering.
The main reason for this is that when you mix, you’re working on individual tracks to create the best possible blend of all the sounds. But when you master, you’re listening to that blend, and determining what needs to be done to make the composite sound better—not just the sounds of the individual tracks.
For example, suppose the overall sound is just a tiny bit dull. When mixing, you’d have to listen to each track and increase the brightness a little bit on each one to produce the desired result—and even then, you might make one track too bright or one not bright enough. When mastering, you can add a little brightness to the overall stereo (or surround) mix, thus influencing all instruments. If you add a slight high-frequency boost, you’re doing the equivalent of adding that boost to all tracks in the music.
Then again, it’s also true that the better the mix, the more likely it is that the mastering will turn out better as well. It won’t be necessary to add as much processing or do “salvage job” mastering, where the task of compensating for problems in the mix fall on the mastering engineer. In one tune I mastered, the guitar was slightly out of tune, and I was asked if that’s something I could fix in mastering. Sorry! I can’t just magically extract a single instrument from a stereo mix and then fix the tuning. Well, at least not with today’s technology.
No matter how good your mix is, there’s always room for improvement. Many years ago, before I started doing my own mastering, I had a CD mastered by ace Nashville mastering engineer Randy Kling. He said the CD hardly needed anything, but he was able to pull back the highs in a few places to reduce some hiss, and added a bit of limiting to make the tracks jump out a little bit more. Were the results radically different? No. Was it worth it? Absolutely—those subtle touches added just the right amount of “seasoning.”
However, do remember that mastering is not intended to salvage a recording, but enhance an already solid mix. If there’s a problem with the mix, remix the tune—don’t count on mastering to solve the problem (although I’ll certainly give it my best shot!).
RP Music just uploaded the first multi-genre, multi-key, multi-tempo piece on the site, entitled “The Boy Can Dance”, which is how we would have sounded had we entered the contest…..