i try and think of it as maximising the sound of something. think there’s a tendency to think of it as correcting ‘errors’ in mixing but you really ought to go back to the mix if there’s stuff wrong with it. obviously loudness is a big thing but also saturation and EQ and compression.
basically play it along side stuff you like until it’s somewhere near.
Have improved a lot on the old pots & pans over lockdown
OR SO I THOUGHT
Been playing at home a lot on a digital kit. Finally had a band practice last week for the first time in 6 months and couldn’t wait to put my ideas into practice on a real kit.
I was dreadful. A real drum kit really is very different to electronic isn’t it?!
Like you said, just dork about until it sounds like stuff you like, if it still doesn’t then go and fix it in the mix. Biggest learning for me regarding mastering is to mix much, much quieter beforehand so you’ve got headroom to work with.
never quite got this, surely it only matters if you’re squashing transients and overcompressing or limiting? otherwise just bounce and knock it down 6db?
Ah, but you assume a level of competence I do not have!
I literally bounce nothing and limit/compress basically not at all. There’s a lot I need to learn, tbh. I found that previously (and this is a mix issue) I was having to compress too much to get things to gel, and I was losing dynamics horrifically as a result. For some reason this workflow seems to work for me, but maybe it’s actually more of a ‘learn to mix’ issue.
I did this in Studio One Prime and mastered it in Audacity - no one’s heard it except me so I’d be happy to hear if there’s any pointers you’d have (outside of my crummy performance obv) because I’d like to start building a bigger project around it and any feedback is helpful. (Of course you don’t have to!)
ha well i’m no mastering engineer, i really only do it for myself out of necessity. i give my albums proper to the pros for which there is no substitue imo, they have far better gear than the few plugins most of us have.
but i think a bit of general advice would be not to halfway house it. i’m probably being a purist but i just think it’s better workflow to print a mix you’re happy with and master it separately. otherwise i think there’s a temptation to twiddle and tweak mixes and mastering settings constantly resulting in a lot of back and forth. it’s a bit putting the cart before the horse.
Yeah, 100 per cent agree. Good advice (also yeah, if you can afford it give it the pros, definitely. I used to work with a mastering engineer who mainly spoke in what I considered to be some sort of elf language for all the sense it made to me)
When I’m struggling with stuff it helps to remind myself that is all totally arbitrary and really music theory is just a common language we use to describe stuff that sounds a certain way. Even octaves and stuff - so what if it’s twice the frequency? We’ve arbitrarily decided that’s important. There are microtonal scales that don’t even have the octave in them.
Play stuff, does it sound good? Yeah, great. No, meh. I subscribed to the music theory reddit ages ago and it’s full of people being like, “If I know what a mixolydian mode is will I become a good musician and make $$$” and it’s like, this is the wrong way around. Unless you’re working in a field that has a really strong theory base (mid-century jazz onwards, modernist classical, blah blah blah) there’s not a huge amount you’re going to gain versus just trying a different chord or note.
I say this as someone who took loads of music lessons when I was a kid, exams, classical, jazz, did theory, a music A level, worked as a musician for five years - not waving my balls about, just saying that all the music theory I learned was less valuable than sitting down and trying to find something more satisfying.
Just find it incredibly confusing, which quickly becomes frustrating that my brain doesn’t understand what the words mean, which becomes NOT FUN - which isn’t really why I like messing around on instruments, so then I just give up!
I like learning it because having that vocabulary is very useful to me in figuring out what I like and don’t like and why bits of my compositions sound too similar (over-fondness on maj7 and add9 chords and resolving a maj7 to the root), or using it to try out intervals and progressions that “should” sound good when I get stuck. Plus it’s interesting. But letting it dictate stuff is a step too far for me.
It’s a nice-to-have in my opinion. I obviously recognise the immense privilege in having the knowledge and education I had, but I can’t honestly say how often I’ve used it!