Mastering Matters

Why Mastering Matters

Just imagine – you’ve finished your latest music recording masterpiece, and you are very happy with the sound. But soon your pride turned to surprise, then disappointment. Then frustration. Your recording sounded pretty cool on the studio monitors. But you put the CD into your home audio system, then in your car, and even on your iPod, but it just never came even close to what you’d heard in the studio.

So what’s happened? What’s gone wrong?…

If you’re new to music recording, you’ve just learned a fundamental lesson – the hard way!

Where you play music, and the sound system used can make a huge difference to how a recording sounds.

As a result, a crucial part of the music production process is to craft a product that as far as possible, will sound great where ever it is played – on a boom-box, sophisticated home audio gear, in car entertainment system, or on your iPod.

That’s what the mastering phase is all about.

We’ll look at this subject in three parts:

1. Why Mastering Matters
2. How to go about Mastering your Recording
3. What if I Can’t Afford to Have My Songs Mastered?

According to Dave:

“Mastering is the final step in the recording process. Like everything else in the musical environment is at an artistic skill on its own. Mastering uses specialized, high-quality audio equipment and the experience and talents of the mastering engineer.”

We can talk about mastering at three different levels:

• Basic
  This is the low-cost, low-budget level. The intention here is to make mastering widely accessible to independent music performers and producers.
• Custom
  This next level is more sophisticated. Using a mastering service will bring a variety of techniques and experience to bear on your recording projects.
• Extended
  This kind of service is aimed to refine an already well mastered recording, and to polish it to perfection.

So how do I decide what level I need?

• Budget – usually a limiting factor!
• The purpose of your recording
  (For example if you’re recording is to be broadcast on a radio Program you don’t need the level quality you require when its to be published as an album. )

See you shortly for the next part:
- How to go about Mastering your Recording