Get you your music to sound professional in your bedroom.
So often you hear a house track that sounds so special in a mix and makes you want to dance. So you quickly rush to download it so that you can enjoy on it on your mobile phone only to realise that it has poor sound quality.
Any song is only as good as its final mix and mastering.
What is mixing and mastering?
Mixing marks the start of post-production, where an engineer carves and balances the separate tracks in a session to sound good when played together. With tools like EQ, compression, panning, and reverb at their disposal, mix engineers reduce clashes between instruments, tighten grooves, and emphasize important song elements. In some cases, they might even layer drum hits with samples from outside the session or mute redundant instrument parts.
Says Daniel Dixon, iZotope Contributor.
According to www.landr.com, mastering is the final step of audio post-production. The purpose of mastering is to balance sonic elements of a stereo mix and optimize playback across all systems and media formats. Traditionally, mastering is done using tools like equalization, compression, limiting and stereo enhancement.
Mixing Tips
- Setting the volumes to get a static mix. This helps you start in a strong position and address any issues in the arrangement and songwriting which might be lacking.
- Cleaning up the sounds so that they are separated and clear.
- Adding artistic effects – In this case, a lot of reverb was used but this is not necessary on a lot of sources. This is where you can use saturation (try fruity waveshaper), delay (Fruity Delay 3) or other artistic effects to add character, life and vibe to your song.
Mastering Tips
- Have an aim when mastering and also use this as a final chance to catch any mistakes, like sounds that might be clipping.
- Listen for bad sound that might distract from the track, (especially in the low mids). The MIX must be good for a good master. Mastering is not a quick fix for a bad mix.
- LOUDNESS- well this is that final step to mastering, making sure that your track is loud enough to be heard and not that it distorts. Here you are ready to export the track on to any online platform or release.