Dec 13

How to Select a Mastering Engineer

Selecting the right mastering engineer for your music is an important decision to make. With everyone vying for your attention and claiming to be the best, it can be difficult to differentiate between various engineers. While we’d love for you to go with us right now, we understand it’s still a decision, so let’s talk about how to select a mastering engineer.how to select a mastering engineer

The first thing you’ll want to do is limit your search to mastering engineers who are willing to offer a free test master for you. Even if it’s just a partial sample of one of your songs mastered in their hands, good mastering engineers stand by their work enough to offer you a free sample before you spend a dime on them. By the same token, you should be wary of mastering engineers who do not offer free test masters as this is a sign that they don’t stand by their work.

Secondly, make use of this test master so that you can get a good idea what your music specifically will sound like in their hands. Just because someone has a good track record of clients doesn’t mean that they’re the best fit for you. Typically if you’ve worked with a mastering engineer before then you know they may be a good fit for you, but don’t go with someone exclusively based on reputation.

Also, don’t discount engineers who don’t specifically master for your genre. Many audio mastering engineers work in various genres and master for all artists, and truthfully some of the best engineers are versatile in their abilities to take on multiple genres and make the artists in any of them sound better. This is a better sign than someone who exclusively works in on genre. Of course you don’t want to go with someone who exclusively works in a genre which is substantially different from yours as you likely won’t be satisfied with someone who doesn’t know what to listen for in your genre.

Also confirm with the engineer before any money changes hands that they offer edits if you’re dissatisfied with their work in any way. The best engineers stand beside their work in this way and care about their clients’ satisfaction as the bottom line. Our engineers will work tirelessly with you until you’re satisfied with the results of your master, even if that’s not the first or even second edit.

Oct 26

3 Ways Mastering Improves Your Music

Mastering is the final stage of audio production and admittedly the most misunderstood stage. Let’s identify in this article 3 different ways which mastering improves your music.mastering improves music

First, audio mastering simply put imporves the quality of your music. It can take a bland mix and a good mastering engineer cacn unlock that mix’s true potential through effects such as compression, limiting, EQ, stereo imaging, and much more. Compression can take a weak mix and give it the glue or presence that it needs to really pop in the speakers. EQ can give a track the shine and cleansing that it needs to sound professional and glossy. Playing with the stereo width will make your track sound larger and more enveloping in the stereo, as well. All of these tools can go a long way when masterfully applied by the right engineer.

Secondly, mastering provides parity level and sound wise with all of your tracks on your record. The audio mastering engineer ensures that they’re all on the same level with one another volume wise and have the same style between them all, effectively taking a random collection of songs and creating a sense of unity which is present on the album.

Finally, the mastering engineer ensures that your music is consistent with industry standards in terms of levels. This is important because most contemporary music today is much louder than music of 30 or even just 10 years ago. If your songs are quieter, they will be perceived as being weaker and less professional than their contemporary peers. A good audio mastering engineer ensures that not only are the songs on your album all at parity volume wise with one another but also with industry and contemporary standards of the day so that when they are played side by side with songs from other artists from today in a mix, they stand up right along side them.

Discover how muh more professional and plain better sounding your final mixes can sound in the hands of our talented audio mastering engineers and get a free sample master today so that you can experience our professional services today firsthand.

Jan 06

What to Consider With Mastering Services

Mastering services will significantly step up and improve the quality of your audio as a finished product. The engineer who performs the mastering services will do whatever is required of them to get your music sounding as good as it possibly can and ready for replication or pressing if you are interested in releasing it in a physical or tangible format.mastering services

There are thousands of mastering engineers all vying for your attention online or in your area which is why you should consider these things before looking into and paying for mastering services of your music.

First, you should find out what sorts of artists the mastering engineer you’re looking at and talking to has mastered for in the past. Some engineers focus on specific genres whereas others will tackle any artist.

You can listen to samples of artists they have done before to get a good idea of the quality of their work as you cannot always rule out an engineer just because they don’t specialize or localized in your particular genre.

It’s also imperative that you get a taskmaster on one of your songs from them personally so that you know exactly what you can expect in terms of a finished product on one of your own song.

Samples will only take you so far because if you don’t hear from the engineer them so after they have worked on your music, you may get something completely different than you anticipated whereas the free taskmaster takes the mystery and guesswork out of the equation.

Most any reputable engineer will offer cost free taskmaster’s to new clients so they can hear at least one of their songs after being worked on by the engineer.

Another important thing to consider when interested in mastering services is the cost. Different engineers charge different rates and charge by different systems. For example some mastering services providers will charge per song whereas others charge for the hour. It’s important to note going into your project exactly how much you can expect to pay at the end of the project so that you can both know that you can afford it at the same time so that you know there are no surprises which can make for an awkward situation after the workers are even done.

In the same vein he should be prepared to know exactly how much work and what kind of work you need done. Common questions you should be ready to answer when talking to a mastering services engineer our how long is your record in minutes, how many tracks does it stand, and what format do you want to release your music in.

Many artists these days are opting to release their music digitally exclusively and are not spending time or money on having a physical or replicated for final word CDs. If you do want a CD or vinyl version of your record, more work goes into the mastering process beyond simply enhancing the audio itself.

Therefore there is a greater cost associated with things like sequencing and putting together a table of contents and data writing so you should be prepared to have all this information ready for your mastering engineer when you’re still discussing with them possibility of working with them.

The more you can talk to them before you work with them, the better off you’ll be as you should feel completely comfortable with your mastering engineer and also know that if you want any changes or at its after-the-fact when you receive your finalize mastered back to you the bill be completed free of charge.

The last thing you want is to be on different pages when you get your music back and it’s not how you want it to sound and you want edit but the engineer informs you that there will be an additional charge for redos.

Dec 27

My Complete Audio Mastering Tutorial

Audio mastering is more than just boosting volumes or even putting together a completed album file to be sent off and replicated. The most important part of mastering is certainly the aspect of enhancing and improving the audio itself as much as possible.audio mastering tutorial

All throughout the music production process you are working to create the best sounding record possible. After you have chosen your guitar sounds and recorded the various tracks which make up your songs and even going through the process of mixing them, there is still work to be done in the mastering stage.

Through the artful and effective implementation of effects like reverb you can bring out the full and true potential of a song as a last step before releasing it to your listeners. You can think of mastering as a kind of final quality assurance in a number of ways but it can be expensive depending on the engineer you go with to have it done professionally.

Some engineers charge upwards of over $50 for a single song which can really break the bank when you’re putting together a 10 or 12 songwriter. For all of this, I’ve put together my own audio mastering tutorial which you can use to achieve and realize the ceiling of potential in your own music.

I mentioned EQ in opening. Equalization analog or digital of fact which separates the full audio spectrum of your song into different bands of frequency. Most commonly you’ll find either a three or four band equalizer which break your music up into low mid and high ranges which you can then tweak further to improve the sound and diminishing or boosting the presence of each one of those bands.

Tweaking different bands will yield different results. For instance, boosting the low end will give your record a figure based year town. On the other end you can boost the high frequency to get a cleaner sound but if you abuse it and go too far in that direction than you’ll find the music will get to tinny and certain vowels and the vocals will have too much sibilance.

You can boost ranges to make up for voice which existed in the recording stage and compensate when something was lacking. On the other hand if something is straining the mix, you can diminish its influence just as easily by dropping that band in the area that you want.

Other effects can be used like reverb to give your song more atmosphere and add a bit of gloss to record which sounds too flat. Compressors can be used to limit the threshold of your audio when necessary, as well. Most of these effects are readily available in most digital audio workstations and there are number of free digital audio workstations available for download online. To simply upload the file for your song which you want to edit and master into your digital audio workstation and add these effects accordingly.

One final word of advice is that you should always upload the best quality files as possible before editing. As an example is much more preferable to upload a wave file of the song over an MP3 or other compressed file type which sacrifices quality for a smaller file size.

Remember that not all mastering studios will break your bank. Music Guy Mastering is currently offering a five dollar special on individual tracks. You need to hear the quality on your own music to believe it for yourself so receive your free test master right now by uploading one of your own songs and hearing the music guy mastering difference today by clicking on this link.

Dec 16

What is Mastering?

One of the most often misunderstood terms and aspects of audio production relates to mastering. Most people ask what is mastering because they have no concept of what goes into it and why it is necessary. This article is going to answer the question what is mastering and remove the confusion surrounding it.

When you get down to it, mastering is a two-part process. You can actually just be a one part process depending on what you want to have done. Let me explain.what is mastering

The first part of mastering which applies to everyone who gets it done generally refers to the actual audio adjustments. After the band or musician has recorded their song and all the different tracks which make up that song, those tracks are rendered down into a final mix. This is a singular file which has all the tracks mixed precisely how the artist or mixing engineer wants them to give it the strongest and best possible sound.

That single file which represents a particular song is then sent off to a mastering engineer in order to enhance that found further. This involves applying popular plug-ins and effects such as compression and equalization and reverb to that final mix file. Many of these effects can be used in the mixing stage but you generally don’t want to apply one single effect to an entire set of tracks but instead you want to apply them to one single file as this will yield a different result. The differences are not applying compression to 24 individual tracks at once, you’re applying it to one single track which has already been rendered.

The effect of a good mastering job is like removing the wrapping from the songs to hear it more crisply and with more clarity. A lot of people make the mistake of assuming that mastering simply boosts the overall volume of a song and while this is generally a byproduct of mastering, this should never be your end goal.

In addition to enhancing and improving the audio itself, the other half of mastering involves writing data to each individual song and creating an album file out of those songs. This includes things like setting the table of contents and setting the transitions between each track in terms of spacing or whether they flow into one another.

Another important part is ensuring that the entire album as a whole is in very in terms of volume with itself and all the different tracks which make it up. The engineer also make sure that the overall album file is on par with other contemporary records in terms of volume as a whole.

Those last two points ensure that there are no jumps were dropped in volume within the record itself and that individual tracks on the record when taken out of context of that record are still at comparable only levels with other contemporary songs of the day so that when someone is listening to one of your songs and a mix along with songs from other artists, there are no significant jumps or drops in volume.

Dec 05

Why Should You Be Interested in Mastering Music?

Mastering music is the final aspect of audio production, occurring in the post production stage and can do so much to bring out the full but hidden potential of your music. A lot of artists do not understand the point of mastering music or don’t fully understand what is involved in it, so in this article we are going to talk about why you should be interested in mastering music.mastering music

First off, mastering music ensures that every track which make up your album are all on the same volume level with one another. This is a problem with unmastered audio because when songs are recorded, they are often done so in different settings with different setups. Some songs with less tracks which make up those songs will be quieter overall than a song with lots of tracks which were recorded possibly with more gain.

Ultimately the mastering engineer ensures that each of these songs are on the same volume level with one another so that they place flawlessly next to one another on your record with no noticeable jumps or drops in volume.

Secondly and in the same vein, mastering music boosts the volume of the entire record to be on point with the standards of the music industry. This is the most misunderstood aspect of mastering because most people assume that this is all that the process is, just making the music louder.

The truth is, music which is recorded in less than ideal conditions sounds better louder than it does quieter as you can more clearly hear the dynamics, and a lot of low quality engineers don’t enhance the audio but simply boost the volume to give the impression of improving the audio. Some of them even advertise this point exclusively to their unwitting audience of artists who don’t know any better, but the true purpose of mastering music is my next point.

The most important point of mastering music is to make it sound better, and in the hands of an engineer who really knows what they are doing, it sounds a lot better. If you knew the difference then you would never even think about releasing your music to your fans before a quality mastering job. This difference is accomplished through the artful application of effects and plugins such as eq which breaks the audio spectrum into more specific bands or ranges for better editing to supplement the mix where necessary and compression and limiters to address clipping and to give the track more unity overall.

Experience the different today at http://www.musicguymastering.com.

Nov 25

3 Reasons Mastering Audio is Important

Mastering audio refers to expressly improving the audio itself. There are other aspects of mastering audio when it comes to the post-production of creating the actual data or image file for a record which will be sent off for replication. In CD format and vinyl format to a lesser extent you have to consider sequencing or how each track flows into one another, whether or not there’s a break, whether or not the tracks overlap, etc.mastering audio

If you want to forgo the CD pressing altogether and focus on a digital release through a site like BandCamp, then you are exclusively interested in just mastering the audio. Let’s talk about 3 reasons for why mastering audio is truly important and should never be considered optional but unnecessary.

First off, as I mentioned in opening, mastering audio will significantly improve the quality of your audio itself in the hands of a skilled and knowledgeable mastering engineer and yield a much more professional quality to it. Likely the most common effect used in mastering is equalization because it gives you so many options and so much control over the quality of the sound. This breaks a mix into different bands of frequency which can be more closely edited, boosted, or diminished as necessary.

You can compensate for voids and inconsistencies left by the recording stage if you know what you’re doing and the difference between an unmastered and a well mastered track are overwhelmingly palpable.

Secondly, mastering audio ensures that every song which makes up your record is harmonious in terms of volume with every other song on that record. This is important because most songs aren’t recorded in the exact same setting and even if they are then it’s likely that they weren’t recorded at the same levels or with the same instruments. Less sonically dense tracks will likely come out as sounding quieter than one with dozens and dozens of tracks, so the engineer has to make sure that there are no inconsistencies when listening to each one back to back in that record’s mix.

Lastly, mastering audio works to get your music on the same volume as industry standards dictate. Even if you’re a purist who doesn’t believe in compressing and boosting a mix’s overall volume, you still likely don’t want to annoy your fans which is what you’ll do if your music is substantially quieter than other contemporary records so that when played back to back in a mix someone has to continually change the volume between your tracks and everyone else’s.

The ultimate goal in mastering audio is to unlock a final mix’s true potential. Discover your music’s true potential by entrusting one of your songs to a free test master from Music Guy Mastering today and hear how good your music could be sounding in less than 24 hours.

Nov 15

Why You Should Get a Free Test Master

*MusicGuyMastering.com is now offering a free test master to all new clients.

Mastering is the all important final step when it comes to getting your music as professional sounding as possible. Major labels demand that their artists’ music be mastered as the final step in audio production, and you should settle for nothing less for your own music. If you’re not convinced that mastering is important for your music, then you should get a test master to hear how good your music could be sounding. Many professional mastering studios offer a free test master so that you can hear the difference in one of your own songs before moving forward with them.

But what does mastering do?

Admittedly, there is a lot of mystique regarding audio mastering. Artists send their finished mixes to the mastering engineer, and they perform some kind of aural magic, and it comes back sounding better than it did on the in. So what are they doing to make your music sound better? It basically comes down to a handful of important aspects of audio processing.

One of the most important aspects of audio mastering is working with the frequencies of the song and using equalization to bring out the best aspects of the song. In equalization, the engineer breaks the song into different bands and increases or diminishes their influence in the song, highlighting specific ranges in some cases to bring out the song’s full potential.

This is where a masterful ear is required to meticulously sift through the audio of the song in every spectrum and raise and drop accordingly to improve the quality. A good job through equalization will make the audio sound cleaner and give it a lot more presence.

A typical byproduct of this is that the song will sound louder. Oftentimes people mistake mastering for simply making a track louder, but there’s so much more that goes into it. However, a mastering engineer can also further bring up the volume of a track to be on par with industry standards.

You don’t want your track to be buried in a playlist of other songs which are a lot louder than yours as this makes your song sound less professional. The trick is to use just the right amount of compression as a mastering engineer to give the song that extra boost but without sacrificing the dynamic inherent nature of the audio.

If you’re not convinced that mastering is for you, then you should get a free test master of one of your own songs and experience the before and after difference to hear firsthand why you owe it to yourself and your fans to get a good mastering job done on your music, without the risk.

Nov 14

Before You Pay for Online Mastering Consider This

Online mastering refers to submitting your music to an engineer for mastering services on the internet. Most studios work with digital audio nowadays so it’s easy after the tracking process to render your final mix down to a final Wave file which can then be sent off to the mastering engineer all via the internet. You may not even ever meet your mastering engineer, you can simply give him or her feedback on what you want and the entire transaction can be communicated via phone or email.online mastering

Before you go with an online mastering engineer, consider a few things. First of which, think about what kind of work you need done. How many tracks do you need mastered? Do you know what format you’re interested in releasing your music in? If you’re interested in a digital only or online release, then that’s pretty straightforward as the only thing necessary is to master the audio itself.

This is done by artfully and judiciously adding effects like equalization to the final mix in order to bring out the true potential of that record. You can cut the mix’s audio into different frequencies which you can boost or diminish in their presence in the mix to attain a better sounding mix overall. If you’re lacking in the bass area you can boost the low end of the spectrum and this effect is effective for supplementing and making up for less than ideal recording conditions.

Other effects such as reverb can give your mix more atmosphere in case you were not recording in the best space acoustically. The online mastering engineer also ensures that every song of your album is at a harmonious volume with every other track on that record and boosts the overall volume of the record to be compliant with current day standards.

This is the extent of audio mastering itself, but if you require additional services you need to let them know. For instance, if you want to release your music in a physical format like CD or vinyl then there is additional work to be done. For instance, when mastering for a CD you have to consider sequencing or how each track flows into the next in terms of spacing. The engineer also can add data which can be read by car stereos or computers when that CD is loaded to display information to the listener. This part also comprises adding copyright and code information for that artist.

Make sure that you establish things like the price and the option for edits up front. You don’t want to get in an awkward spot at the end of the session when you want some extra work done and the engineer invoices you for that work because you weren’t on the same page in the offset.

Nov 03

CD Mastering Will Improve Your Recordings

CD mastering is the very important final stage and phase in audio production. This happens long after musician writes the song and records it and even has that song turned into a final mix and that final mix is sent off to the CD mastering engineer to be completed. There are so many different misnomers and misunderstandings about what goes into CD mastering which is why a lot of musicians overlook it and ignore it because they simply don’t know why it’s important.cd mastering

Let’s talk about what goes in the CD mastering and how and why it will improve your recording.

First off, CD mastering is used to create the CD file itself which will get sent off for replication. This means setting the spaces between tracks, ensuring they flow into each other in the style and manner which the artist wants, and very importantly ensuring that the volume levels for all of those various final mixes which make up every song on the album are at parity volume wise with one another.

CD mastering also writes data to the album as a whole and every track which comprises the. This is information such as ISR or UPC codes and even copyright and artist information. Ultimately CD mastering exists to ensure that the final product which get sent off for replication is flawless so that there are no issues when you have that CD sent off to be replicated.

The most important aspect of CD mastering is in the touching up and enhancing of the audio itself. Once a particular song has been rendered into its final mix, that mix is sent the mastering engineer and further plug-ins and effects are applied in order to give it a more polished and professional sound. This includes using compression to give the entire song a more unified feel without sacrificing the extremes in the next as well as applying equalization to bring out different sections in that mix and make them more prominent.

The overall end result and effect can be likened to removing the shrink-wrap around the song which existed before so that the sound comes through more clearly and with more clarity and crispness. If you have never heard one of your songs after an effective audio mastering job, you won’t believe how much better it can make your audio sound which is what it’s all about, delivering the best possible final product to your listeners.