issue 37 working_Layout 1 11/1/2013 1:17 PM Page 24
The Handsome Grandson breaks it down on..
What makes mastering sooooo
important? Well, I’ll tell ya...
aka Chris Sonia of Dauntless Mastering
is.
Let’s start with what mastering
You’ve spent weeks or even
months tracking your music. Your engineer has spent a lot longer mixing it
than you thought he would, but every
proof he sends out sounds better than
the last. The band finally agrees that
this is the final mix! Time to show our
fans!
So you take your mix and listen
to it in the car. “What happened? This
sounded titties in the studio!” says
Jaime the bassist as he exhales a
huge hit of sweet sticky marijuana
smoke. “Hell if I know” you say. “The
low end is all weird and flubby. The
highs are like, splayed out man!” So
immediately you get on the phone with
your recording engineer. He says “It
hasn’t been mastered yet! My mixing
room has a couple of weird spots
where it comes to bass, and I have the
highs turned down on my speakers so
my ears don’t get tired as quickly when
I mix. But it’s all there; the mastering
guy will take care of it.” That is what
the mastering guy does. He takes the
final mix and makes it sound good on
all systems, and on a wide range of
speakers from the car down to ear
buds and all the way up to huge multi
thousand dollar systems. They do this
in large rooms on big beautiful sounding speakers that are accurate in
terms of not only frequency but dynamic range. They have subwoofers
that are for low end accuracy, not for
showiness, and they test their equipment with a wide range of tools to ensure this accuracy. But that isn’t all
that they do.
When mastering a song one
has to take into account the genre,
the particular taste of the artist, the
current trends, and has to know
what works and what doesn’t. The
mastering engineer listens not to
the song, but to frequency ranges
and for clicks and pops that may
have gone undetected by the studio engineer.
If there is an egregious problem with the mix, often times the
mastering engineer will bounce it
back to the mix engineer, but more
often than not, a good mastering
guy will be available during the mix
process to keep the engineer informed as to how to shape the mix
for mastering. Push up the drums,
reshape the bass guitar, etc.
The mastering guy (or girl,
shut up feminists) often times also
helps to pick the song order accord ???????????????????????)???????????????????????????e?)?????????????????????!?????)??????????????????????????)????????????????????)??????????????????)??????????????????)5@????????)?????????????????)Q??????????)??????????????????)???????????????)?????????)????????????????)???????????????????)%?????????????????)?????????????)??????????????)????????????????()??????????????????????????????)?????????????????%?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????9?)????????????????????]????????)???????????????????e??????????)???????????????e????????)?????)M?????????????????????)??????????????????????????????)????????????5????????) ?????????????????????????)???????????????????????????)5?????????1???????????????)Q??????1??????????((