Mastering your mix
How do you mater your recordings?
To be honest I didn’t have a good answer myself. So I decided to do a little research, Google to the rescue. On my Google search this site came up with a pretty good description of the term and processes http://homemusicrecording.com/music/master-your-recording/. The site lists these as mastering aspects to a song, Track volume optimization, Equalization levels, Tonal balance adjustment for consistency, Edit the final arrangement of spacing between songs, Create and edit PQ sub-code, Creation of CD master ready for mass duplication.
What a list, in my mind most of this does apply but when we are talking about the new great hit song my short list is, volume, EQ, left right balance per track, and effects revered chorus and the like per track. I apply these all too each track and some cases to a certain part of a track. It’s all a matter what I hear in the ghost ear, what’s not yet recorded or even played. We all have it happen to us. As song writers we start writing a song sitting at the keyboard or guitar and we hear the drums doing this, the guitar sounds like Benson here and Carlos here the strings increase here and so on.
So, on a guitar track I will record it with my trusty Virtualizer PRO by Behringer set with a simple revered. Once the part is recorded I will listen to it over and over editing EQ mix, a little brighter or deeper depending on the guitar I played. All of my audio files, are edited in Adobe Audition regardless if they were directly recorded in Audition or generated from MIDI plug-ins from Sonar. I do create multiple versions of them as well keeping the first clean recording and then editing and saving a copy this way I can apply the new track to the mix down and see how it sounds against it all.
My brother once told me the best recoding he has heard from me is a song on Island Life called By Request. In that song to be honest I wish I saved all of the settings I used because the mix is very clean. In short, I will master the guitar tracks cleaning them up adding my EQ and FX’s then go on to the remaining tracks doing much the same. On the master mix down of the song I do very little in the way of editing but with Audition you can control a lot per track and master. I will usually add some small amount of FX trying to give the music that almost live feel. I try to only apply EQ to each track there is nothing worse than going through the last mix and do your EQ on it and drop an instrument.
I was speaking with an old friend and guitarist I truly admire, Larry Green he was talking about the canvas of music. The foundation of the recording in my ears is the drums, keys, bass rhythm guitar and maybe the strings although they can be like the solo and melody instruments the brush the artist paints with. With that in mind I master music that way. The canvas has to be clean with all of the subtitle sounds and FX’s in place then I bring in the accents the brush strokes looking at that meters helps a lot then it’s on to the melody and chorus then lastly the final touches. I burn a CD drop it in the car and go for a drive. To be honest the best way I have found is to spend a day or two listening to other music trying to erase the not recorded but heard part of the music from my ear. Then listening to it in a car to me is better then headphones or even the most expensive monitors out there. I make my mental notes and back to the mix. In the case of By Request it took me almost a year to get that CD where I wanted it.
So to sum it up, if it sounds like it needs it, then master it. I master each track making many copies so I can go back and play with each then I bus it down to a master track and only adjust what is needed and I hope and pray that is only volume.
Enjoy and keep playing
