So your music or songs are all set, mixed and its time to release them, right? Well maybe not. Mixing is studio dependent, pro studio or bedroom studio, pro engineer or upcoming engineer. But is the music dynamically ready for the outside world?
Mastering brings out the best in the material, when the sound is right, you sell more songs. Mastering is the final doorway your music passes through on its journey Mastering is the technical and creative act of balancing, equalizing and enhancing each song. Mastering ensures the songs have attained the maximum musicality in the open dynamic world. Mastering is the glue that turns a collection of songs into a balanced album that feels right from beginning to end.
Your songs should be mastered preferably in a controlled and treated studio by an experienced mastering engineer. However before you send them in for this type of service, there are a few things that should be considered.
Preparing Your Tracks for Mastering No Compressing on Stereo Mix Bus. Be sure to remove any compression, limiting or maximizing effects that you may have used to boost the volume of your mixdowns on the output stereo track. For demo mixes these effects and plugins can be used, but not when sent for mastering.
Stereo Mix Level Must be Below 0db.
Hitting 0db can mean clipping and distortion so preferably use around -3dB as guideline peak.
Don’t Over Use Effects on Tracks.
Reverb and other effects are really nice for getting rid of some of the rough edges of your tracks but they can also make your songs very muddy and mastering cannot always undo this. If you are not sure how much reverb to use, less may be better, go with a drier and cleaner sound.
Get Rid of Noise on Tracks.
When mixing, make sure to eliminate or, at least, limit any unwanted background noise. Check especially the vocal tracks for clicks or noises. If some noises are unavoidable, consider using noise gates or filters to help keep the sound out. Cannot be completely fixed in mastering without effecting overall dynamics.
Provide a Quality Output File
When you send your music in, make sure that each stereo mix file is in the best possible file format for mastering. Make sure they are of a bit depth and sample rate that is similar to the settings used when first recording. Minimum format is a Wave file of 16bits at 44.1 KHz. (Don’t send in compressed mp3s). Preferably send 24 or 32 bit data files (wav) 44.1 to 192 kHz.
Provide Information and an Example
Give as much info on your song, the bpm, what DAW was used to mix, what sound you are targeting as a release, genre, even provide a demo mix of each song that you have done and if possible some reference material (songs by other artists) in the genre that you are pursuing.
Remember Mastering cannot fix a bad mix.
Prepare you mix well. If possible listen on several types of systems to demo mixes.
Email me for for full requirements monkeyshine@axxess.co.za
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