The following is a general process that you can apply when mastering your own work. When approaching a mastering projecting your mindset and perspective are key to getting a result, and the tools you use are somewhat secondary. So, this post focuses on setting up the correct mindset and context with which to approach your mastering project.
There are many tips and tricks type content on the internet that can be very helpful. That content is even more helpful when you have very specific questions you need answered. The following process is a great way to get started and get to these specific questions, making all that tips and tricks. If you are already familiar with using EQ, compression, limiting, and plugins in general, the following process will provide a nice starting point for you to employ your knowledge to master your own work.
For this blog we’re going to assume we are mastering a 4-track EP for stereo release on streaming platforms. But, these processes can be applied to audio projects of many types.
Wait, what is mastering?
Mastering is the final stage of an audio project. It’s where you take the completed stereo mixes and optimise them so that listeners get the best experience however they choose to listen to the work (You can read more about what mastering is here: What does a Mastering Engineer Do?).
When should I start mastering?
Firstly, we need to clearly define when we are mastering, this will give us clarity of focus and perspective and lead to better results. So, when should you start mastering?
When you’re sure your mixes are sorted, is a good place to begin. If there’s a little vocal click that’s bugging you, the drums in the chorus don’t hit hard enough, the vocals are a little lost at points, or similar issues, these can all be addressed in the mix, so go back to the mix and fix these things. If the mix feels good in your studio, and on your fave headphones and bluetooth speaker, and you don’t have that niggling feeling that something’s a little off at such-and-such point in the tune, then you’ve probably finished your mix and your ready to move on to mastering.
For a great master it’s important to seperate the process of mixing from that of mastering. You’ve no-doubt been slogging away at that mix for some time, and it’s super common to lose perspective on how the song as a whole is sitting in the outside world. This “how does my song work in the real world?” question is essential to mastering, so we must clear our mind and recalibrate our perspective before approaching a master.
The best thing to do is not listen to those mixes for 24 hours or more (the longer the better!). During this break you could listen to nothing at all, your favourite couple of albums a few times over, or some music you’ve never heard before. When you feel like you’ve got a bit of distance from the mix process it’s time to dive into mastering.
Calibrate your listening level
This is a fairly important part of the process because humans are very sensitive to differences in sound pressure level. For simplicity we are going to do the super quick version to calibrate our monitoring system. This is so simple that ‘calibrate’ is a little of an overstatement, maybe “find a consistent listening level” is more accurate statement.
Hit play on your reference tracks. Make sure your giving a healthy level out of the music player (Apple Music, Spotify, etc.), 100% is ideal. Then adjust the volume of your speakers (using your audio interface/monitor controller, or sound card, or computer volume, or headphone amp, etc.). Set this to a comfortable and engaging listening level. Where you set this level is up to you, but you want to feel like you’re ‘feeling it’ and hearing everything in the music. Too quiet and you’ll find it hard to hear what’s going on in the bass region, too loud and you’ll find it hard to gauge dynamics, and your ears will fatigue very quickly.
Once we’ve got this level, it’s important that you leave the monitor knob alone. We want to keep perspective and when we start to adjust the volume knob we add more variables which make it difficult to clearly perceive what needs to happen with our master.
Setup a session
Bring the finished mixes into a new DAW session for mastering. This takes away any temptation to adjust the mix as we are mastering. We are working with a 4-track EP here, so bring all four songs into this new session. Depending on your DAW you could set this up a number of ways. Perhaps the simplest way is to have one song per stereo track and set them end to end, so that as the first track finishes the next one starts. Your tunes will play one after the other, but each has its own track.
Gather some references
We discussed perspective before, when we’re in our mastering session we need to leverage already mastered music to calibrate our ears and keep a clear perspective. Gather your favourite 3 or 4 songs that fit with the genre of the EP you are mastering. It’s best to find reference music that you love! The way music affects us is very unique and complex and all the music you love has some unexplained something that really connects with you on some level. When using your favourite music as a reference we can look to reveal or impart some of that “special something” in the new music we are mastering.
Make sure these reference songs are easily accessible and you can listen to them at the click of a button. You could drop them into the DAW mastering session, or have a music player like Apple Music or Spotify running parallel to your mastering session. It’s essential that you are playing these references through the same speakers that you’re mastering through! During the mastering process this allows us to compare the professionally mastered music with our own work revealing what needs to change with our masters.
Start listening to your mixes!
So, we are setup with our mastering session in our favourite DAW, we’ve collected a few reference tracks, and we’ve listened to the reference tracks at a volume we are comfortable with. It’s time to listen to the mixes we are about to master.
Firstly, grab a piece of paper and a pencil. On this first listen keep the song playing and don’t stop it. Anything you hear and want to change just write a note, but let the music keep playing. It can be a test of will power to keep listening and stay focussed, particularly when you notice something that needs attention. But, too much stopping, starting and tweaking of plugins is another way we will lose perspective. So, for this first listen, let a whole tune, or the whole EP, play through without stopping and note anything that comes to mind. Some notes might look like:
First listen notes
1st track too quiet overall
Love the low-end balance
Tighten-up fade at the end of track 1.
2nd track feels very dry and cold compared to the first, needs warmth.
Vocal is a little sibilant.
3rd track, is super narrow, find some width.
4th track is a little loud in comparison to others.
4th track width is perfect, use as reference for others.
This process of a full listen and note taking can be very powerful in clearly drawing your attention to what’s happening and what needs to be addressed. You can return to this at any point, just sit back, listen start to finish, and take notes.
What do we do next?
We now have a bunch of things we can address about these tunes, so we must go through each note point and work out the best way to address the given concern. If you’re confident in operating the plugins you have you are all set, address these sonic concerns through the application of your favourite EQ, or compressor, or whatever (grab tape saturation to add warmth, grab an EQ to tone down the mid-range, gain a little SPL with a limiter).
If you don’t know how to address the issues, all good, you have a list of very specific questions for the internet — “How do you warm up a track? How do you decrease mid-range muddiness? How do you use a limiter to increase loudness?” As mentioned above, there are fantastic resources on how to do certain things to audio and the more specific questions you ask the more useful the information you will find.
Where do I apply plugins?
In our very simple DAW setup you have two options, if you are making a change to one of your 4 tracks you would place a plugin on the stereo channel that song is on. If you want the plugin to affect the whole EP you would place it on the stereo bus, where all audio flows through. For example, perhaps each track needs a different EQ curve, you would place a different EQ on each channel. Perhaps the whole EP needs to be increased by the same amount of gain to feel loud enough, you could place a limiter on the stereo bus, so that all songs flow through this limiter.
In a future post I will explain where to place plugins and some common things that you may do, and more on signal routing.
In summary…
We can avoid a lot of back and forth, and time consuming tweaking if we approach mastering with a clear mind, clear perspective, and apply simple processing with specific intentions. By following the simple workflow presented above you can master your music to the best of your ability using the skills you already have. The essence of this technique is really listening at a consistent level and taking notes, this helps us keep a clear perspective, keep our ears open, and make intentional sonic choices.
If you have any questions and/or you’d like to hire a professional to master your music, I’d love to hear from you. You can request a quote on the Quote page, or ask a question at the Contact page.
