[7 Strings of Hate]

Hey guys.
In my years of playing, i didnt focus much on the recording aspect. It bites me in the ass now, so there are many questions i dont really know about. For instance, what excatly does mastering entail? What are you supposed to be finshed with upon reaching this point, and what details does the mastering involve?

[courtney2018]

This is a huge topic that goes into alot of detail to do it correctly. Basically you use tools such as compression, EQ, adding effects, adjusting levels, etc. to give a professional polish to your tracks. Every instrument needs to have it's space in the stereo field - it's physical space (using reverb/delay) and it's frequency space.

You can spend alot of time toying around with all these things and just go in circles. What you need to do is pick up a book, maybe at amazon.com on mastering. I browse the magazine rack every month to find tips and tricks on mastering in different mags. I've got several of them that have a ton of information in it...lots of good stuff.

That's the basics though, but to do this right you might want to spend $30 or so on a book and get started.

[7 Strings of Hate]

Originally Posted by courtney2018

This is a huge topic that goes into alot of detail to do it correctly. Basically you use tools such as compression, EQ, adding effects, adjusting levels, etc. to give a professional polish to your tracks. Every instrument needs to have it's space in the stereo field - it's physical space (using reverb/delay) and it's frequency space.

Oh, thats mastering? I thought you were basically supposed to have that done by the time that mastering begins.

[newamerikangospel]

If music was cooking, then the music would be the ingredients, the recording would be the cooking temperature and time, and mastering would be how much of each, and where they go

[courtney2018]

Originally Posted by 7 Strings of Hate

Oh, thats mastering? I thought you were basically supposed to have that done by the time that mastering begins.

Are you thinking about the effects that you apply to your guitar sound while you're playing? What you'd want to do is record with a non-effect signal. Take out all the reverb, delay, and chorus and put whatever compression you want in your signal. Then record your clean or distortion parts. Once you're in your mastering program then you add compression, reverb, delay, chorus, and whatever else you want in there. If you were to go to a real recording studio this is how it would be done - told simply of course.

It's easier to adjust those effects in the mastering program then to re-record your guitar part with the effects in there already. You might have to re-record 20, 30, 40 times or more to get it perfectly right the way you want.

There's alot of mastering programs out there that do alot more than just mastering. I use FLStudio. If you don't have anything you can try out FLStudio for nothing. Download a trial and get full access to every feature the program has to offer. When it comes time to buy they have several versions ranging in price. The cheapest is $50, which isn't too bad at all. You can always upgrade your version to a higher version later on.

I'm sure you've heard of ProTools. You've also got Reason, Ableton Live, Cubase and a few others.





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[Shaman]

Adding effects, adjusting levels, panning, EQ, compression etc. are done in the MIXING stage.

Mastering is usually the about the overall volume of the album, and that does include adding compression, and maybe even some slight EQ, but but the mastering stage should be about making all the tracks equally loud and that they share the same soundscape.

[7 Strings of Hate]

see shaman, thats more what i thought of when i hear mastering, fine details

[Shaman]

Originally Posted by 7 Strings of Hate

see shaman, thats more what i thought of when i hear mastering, fine details

Yep, that's the way it is!

Mastering is about the overall volume, the gaps between the songs etc. not individual instruments.

[ukfswmart]

Mastering is about much more that just making all tracks on an album the same volume. Mastering engineers won't always be working with a two-track stereo mix; it's not uncommon for engineers to work with 'stems', which are like individual mixes of a certain instrument or instrument groups (drums being a common one) in order to get the best out of the mix

Audio mastering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Jason]

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