Mastering Questiuon

[pwomack]

Hello all songwriters!I'm new to the Taxi forum and I'm thinking about sigining up as a member.My question is about submitting material.What are your opinion on mastering?Do you get every track you think is your best mastered before you submit it ?Or do you try to do as clean a mix as possible and just submit what you have ?I'm curious ...is it more about the engineering or the song ?Thanks for your reply

[hummingbird]

what kind of listings will you be submitting to? If we know your goals, then we can help more effectively.

[ibanez468]

Jul 12, 2009, 6:22pm, pwomack wrote:My question is about submitting material. What are your opinion on mastering?Do you get every track you think is your best mastered before you submit it?I master my own tracks (as most of us do here) and submit regardless of whether I think it's my best or not. I strive to get it to be the best that I possibly can though. What's more important is that it fits the requirements of a listing. In that regard, you try to do the best that you can (even though in the beginning, it may not necessarily be your BEST) to hit those listings just right, in order to get the tune forwarded. Your BEST compositions come along as you continue to keep working & keep writing. Quote:Or do you try to do as clean a mix as possible and just submit what you have?I try to do that too, prior to mastering. So really, I work at accomplishing both, as I feel both work hand in hand. I'm sure there are some who specifically work at just getting the cleanest mix possible, and submit. And then there are those who mix, master (possibly in-house or outside) & submit. Depends on the resources that you have available.Quote:I'm curious...is it more about the engineering or the song?It's about everything. Production, engineering, arrangement, lyrics, musicianship...the whole nine. Nothing gets left out of the equation.Quote:Thanks for your replyNo problem.

[mazz]

I'm finding that for the work I do, instrumental music for film/TV/library, the line between composing, recording, mixing and mastering is becoming more and more blurred. They seem to blend together in to one work flow. Depending on the type of music, I may be mixing as I'm composing so when the writing is done, the mix is pretty near complete as well. Other times, particularly in orchestral music, I'll be mixing as I'm orchestrating but I'll also do more mixing after the orchestration is done.As far as mastering, it really depends on the type of music and the intended usage. For electronic-type music, I'll be a bit more aggressive in the mastering process and may squash the mixes a bit more than I would for an acoustic based or orchestral piece, since that sound is more expected in that style. Overall, though, I use a lighter touch than I might if I were mastering for a CD release. It's good practice to give the end user some leeway with levels, etc. so they don't have to, for instance, reduce the gain on your mix in order to do some EQ or compression. Any extra steps take time and time is money and they may decide pass on your piece if it's too much work for them. I could go on and on but sleeping needs to happen at least a little bit!!Welcome!!Mazz

[pwomack]

Hey thanks alot to allIm looking forward to enrolling and hopefully one day i'll get a song forwarded. ( who knows)

[fullbirdmusic]

I agree with Ibanez, that it's the whole package. If one or two things are lacking, the whole song will suffer.With that said, I don't do any mastering in the definition of mastering (getting all songs at the same level with the same "tone") because I don't record for albums right now. Each song has its own separate "tone" with, of course, some signature aspects of how I record my music in either its instrumentation, tone, or feel. Other than that, I attempt to get the best mix humanly possible with what I've got and get the levels very good at mid-volumes, so that it sounds great on any sound system. I guess that also comes to the definition of "broadcast quality". But IMO, I won't do any "mastering" of my tracks because I'm not a mastering engineer and I don't have the time for that. I want to write great songs with great mixes!

[mojobone]

TV and film stuff, I would leave room for the guys in audio post to match levels and EQ to the rest of the soundtrack; I just try to make sure there's enough level and dynamic range to work with.

[fullbirdmusic]

Aug 2, 2009, 12:17am, mojobone wrote:TV and film stuff, I would leave room for the guys in audio post to match levels and EQ to the rest of the soundtrack; I just try to make sure there's enough level and dynamic range to work with.Bingo.

[hollivals]

Yes most of us in here do "master" our stuff, which usually means a compressor or few on the main bus, maybe a bit of EQ too.But what a real mastering engineer does is to spend atleast 30 minutes working your art in a mastering studio more expensive than a brand new SVU with 10+ years of experience doing exactly that with monitors that can reveal a mouse farting a mile away (as someone said in some movie).If you are submitting to someone that pays well, chances are their sound guy can do this better than you. Definately better than me, which is why I think I'll just submit unmastered stuff once I'm ready to sign up here.If it's a low budget operation and the film editor will cue the songs himself, then it's probably better to pitch it compressed and punchy.If you want more aggression in your mix, using a parallel compression can help, which means you send the drums along with bass f.x. to a stereo bus and compress that quite hard and sneak it underneath the original signal, that way it gets more presence without becoming weak and wimpy at lower levels, f.x. as a backround cue in a busy scene. It would be awful to be rejected because of a "mastering" mistake.

[guitarhacker]

Mastering..... to my understanding is the process of making a group of songs all sound like they belong together..... levels, eq, compression...etc...However, I do use a "mastering suite" to get my finished tunes sound as good as possible. There is no sense sending a song to a listing with sub par eq, and low levels.... by all means get it sounding as good as possible. There's some serious competition....