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Mastering Introduction

Objectives

hese pages are to state what WaterFall believes true Mastering consist of. What many people don't realize is just how great a difference is made to commercial records at the mastering stage. Prior to mastering, you might be surprised at just how ordinary some mixes sound. Some call extra EQ'ing and compressing Mastering. These are but two of the possible enhancements that a Mastering Engineer may do to your product!

• In the mixing process the important musical elements have been brought out in the final mix.
• The EQ has been done as well as panning. Effects have been utilized to give the sound depth and space.
• Listening to, and thinking about, the mix of a song (the sounds and balances), separate from the song itself (the melody, the lyrics, etc).
• Listening to, and thinking about, the mix of a song and how it supports and relates to the song itself.
• Listening closely to individual sounds in the mix, and how they complement (or detract from) one another.
• Listening to the overall blend of all of the sounds of a mix.
• Finding a language to describe and articulate what we hear, how we hear it, and why we think its good (or not so good!).

So what if we had to come up with an answer to the question posed at the start of this topic? What would we say? If we made a list of the elements in a "good" mix, we might say that in a "good" mix:

• Everything in the music sounds "balanced."
• Everything in the music has its own sonic space in the mix.
• The overall mix has a lot of depth and clarity.
• Everything sounds "clean."

These are elements that should be handled by the Mixing Engineer.

Mastering, as you know, is the final step to achieving your sound. It is a very important step in the process of delivering your music to the public.

First view of a Session

Below is a ProTools screen shot of an example of a song after laying the tracks. This is just the tracks with no effects from a session, unmixed:

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