Some Mastering Questions

[open-road-matt]

Hi Folks,
I'm hoping I can get a bit of info and ask some questions about mastering.

I have finished recording and mixing a new record. This will be my 7th CD of original music. I have always had my CDs mastered with positive results but this time around is a different story.

I worked very, very hard to get my mixes exactly the way I wanted them before I sent them off for mastering. I didn't think they needed much. I wanted the beginnings and endings nice and clean, proper spacing between songs and a consistent volume level throughout the record.

I got the mastered songs back yesterday and out of 14 songs, I was OK with two of them.

Most of the mastered songs sound fundamentally different than my mixes. The songs have no space to them at all. It's just a big wall of music! The vocals are no longer "in the pocket" relative to the other instruments. Instruments that were panned to one side or the other to make room for vocals now seem right in my face and annoying. Background hand percussion is at the forefront of the mix. Things like that.

I don't really know what to do. I don't really want to go back and remix all of these songs based on what I'm hearing in the mastered versions. I feel like I'd just be guessing at what corrections to make. I wasn't able to identify any of the problems I have with the mastered songs in my original mixes. And since I'm sending them off, there would be a couple of days of turn around before I get to hear how my corrections come out in the mastered version.

At this point I'm wondering how difficult it would be to do the mastering on my own. Any thoughts on this?

I sure don't mind taking the time to learn a new skill. I'm by no means a pro at recording and mixing but I started doing that on my own because I wasn't satisfied with what I was getting in the studio. I'm not totally satisfied with the results I get here at home (probably never will be!) but I can spend the time to get things sounding the best I can and try to learn from the mistakes I make.

Any thoughts and advice would be wonderful!

Thanks!
Matt

[Scott Whigham]

Wow - that's terrible to hear. Sorry about that. Have you talked with the ME and explained the problem? I'd think most MEs would be interested to hear that you disliked their work this much. I'd assume that they would be more than willing to work it out. It could be that you just found someone with a strong vision who imprinted that vision a bit too aggressively. Maybe they could dial it back a bit and send you a test track before you asked them to re-do the others?

[stevecuss]

You're far more experienced than I am, but I thought the mastering phase didn't deal with individual tracks in the mix, but rather, you sent your "mix" in the form of a bounced down, rendered stereo single track. The mastering phase then addresses commercial volume, fades, master eq and compression if needed.

It sounds like what the ME did was remix your tracks, not just master them. Is that the way you usually operate. As a newibie, I certainly may have misunderstood the role and place of mastering

[open-road-matt]

Originally Posted by Scott Whigham

Wow - that's terrible to hear. Sorry about that. Have you talked with the ME and explained the problem? I'd think most MEs would be interested to hear that you disliked their work this much. I'd assume that they would be more than willing to work it out. It could be that you just found someone with a strong vision who imprinted that vision a bit too aggressively. Maybe they could dial it back a bit and send you a test track before you asked them to re-do the others?

Hi Scott!
Thanks so much for the reply. I really appreciate it.

I have been in contact with the ME via email. I tried my best to explain my troubles. His first thought is that he might have gotten carried away with the overall levels of the songs. After doing some listening and comparing this morning, that is most definitely the case!

The vibe I'm going for with this record is a fairly simple folk/singer/songwriter album. Nothing slick or too polished. I know my limitations and I'm trying to be realistic about the scope of this project. This is for me to send out to potential venues and for people to purchase either at my shows or on-line if they've heard me and like what I do.

I want it to sound as good as I can make it sound but I'm not going to knock Taylor Swift off the charts!

With that in mind, I grabbed two songs this morning: Gordon Lightfoot's Song For a Winters Night and Jack Johnson's Breakdown. Quite different I know but two recordings that I love by acoustic singer/songwriters. The mastered mix of mine that I compared to these two songs was probably half again as loud!

I dumped all three songs into GarageBand to take a look at the wave forms and that visually confirmed what I was hearing.

My song:



Gordon Lightfoot's Song For A Winters Night:



Jack Johnson's Breakdown:



I let the other two songs play for a bit until each had reached its dynamic peak, whole band in, vocals, etc and those songs are still not at the level where my song starts!

I shared all of this with the ME and he's a super guy and very willing to work with me. But time has become somewhat of a factor and I still don't know how much of this is on my end.

I'm fully willing to accept the fact that all the problems I'm hearing are the result of my mixes but I have no way of knowing that! I reached out to a few folks locally to try and get some help but didn't have any luck.

That's why I'm thinking today that if I could start chipping away at some kind of mastering on my own, perhaps that could happen while the ME I'm working with is redoing these songs and I can compare the two and maybe learn how to do this.

Thanks again!
Matt

[open-road-matt]

Originally Posted by stevecuss

You're far more experienced than I am, but I thought the mastering phase didn't deal with individual tracks in the mix, but rather, you sent your "mix" in the form of a bounced down, rendered stereo single track. The mastering phase then addresses commercial volume, fades, master eq and compression if needed.

It sounds like what the ME did was remix your tracks, not just master them. Is that the way you usually operate. As a newibie, I certainly may have misunderstood the role and place of mastering

Hi Steve,
It's my understanding that the mastering engineer will address each individual track but do so in a way that makes whole record "fit" together, if that makes sense.

So they are applying some EQ, some compression, etc. to each individual track with the goal of attaining an album of songs that sound good together.

But then again, I've always just left the mastering process to others without knowing as much as I should about it.

Matt

[Scott Whigham]

Originally Posted by open-road-matt

I shared all of this with the ME and he's a super guy and very willing to work with me. But time has become somewhat of a factor and I still don't know how much of this is on my end.

I'm fully willing to accept the fact that all the problems I'm hearing are the result of my mixes but I have no way of knowing that! I reached out to a few folks locally to try and get some help but didn't have any luck.

That's why I'm thinking today that if I could start chipping away at some kind of mastering on my own, perhaps that could happen while the ME I'm working with is redoing these songs and I can compare the two and maybe learn how to do this

Glad to hear the ME is reasonable about this. I do wonder though if he's done some remixing, just based off of what you said. I'd be more than happy to pull them up on the big monitors here and A/B to give you a different opinion - PM me if you like.

If time is a problem, then you really have to say, "Hey wait - am I realllllly going to have time to learn ME stuff so that I can master this myself?"

I'll PM you some other ideas.

[open-road-matt]

Originally Posted by Scott Whigham

Glad to hear the ME is reasonable about this. I do wonder though if he's done some remixing, just based off of what you said. I'd be more than happy to pull them up on the big monitors here and A/B to give you a different opinion - PM me if you like.

If time is a problem, then you really have to say, "Hey wait - am I realllllly going to have time to learn ME stuff so that I can master this myself?"

I'll PM you some other ideas.

Thanks Scott!
Again, I really appreciate the help. I'll reach out to you via PM.

I do hear what you're saying about trying to learn how to do this with time being a factor. I just know that there will be some down time as I wait for the newly mastered versions. And perhaps trying to do some mastering myself might give me a better idea on how what I do with my mixes sounds after the mastering process.

Thanks again!
Matt

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by open-road-matt

I didn't think they needed much. I wanted the beginnings and endings nice and clean, proper spacing between songs and a consistent volume level throughout the record.

Yes, you can easily do those things yourself.

[Gutch]

How about posting one of your songs pre and post mastering to get an idea of the differences? Then, perhaps we can offer some suggestions?

I use Mackie HR824 monitors through a FocusRite interface and PreSonus Studio One DAW software that includes plenty of mastering tools including spectrum and phase analysis.

[open-road-matt]

Thanks again for all the replies!

I've been in touch with the ME and I think we are headed in a good direction. It sounds like I needed to do a better job explaining my vision for the record. He is starting on the first three songs and I should have new versions by tomorrow morning.

Originally Posted by Gutch

How about posting one of your songs pre and post mastering to get an idea of the differences? Then, perhaps we can offer some suggestions?

I use Mackie HR824 monitors through a FocusRite interface and PreSonus Studio One DAW software that includes plenty of mastering tools including spectrum and phase analysis.

I thought about posting some samples but I mainly just wanted to get peoples' take on the mastering process and whether or not it is something I should consider tackling on my own.

Matt

[Bob Womack]

Thought of encouraging you to contact the mastering engineer and having a talk and actually wrote up a long reply back in the afternoon but as I previewed the post I noticed that another post had popped up where you said you'd talked to him. Marvelous! That's what it wants.

Bob

[Doug Young]

One suggestion when mastering: Well, make that 2. I always try to provide some reference tracks, to show the ME what I'm going for. It's not that they'll match that exactly, just the idea of tuning them into your taste. On a related note, I try to find someone who already leans toward my taste. Some mastering engineers can do anything, and you'll find guys who do death metal one minute and classical the next, but I feel a lot better if the ME specializes in the type of music I do. If they're really tuned in, you won't even need to provide reference tracks

[open-road-matt]

Hi Bob and Doug!
Thanks for weighing in and for the suggestions!

I've worked with this ME before. This will be our third project together but this will be different. The first time was in 2007 and we both lived in the same town. That made things much easier. I could hear mastered versions right away, make any adjustments I had to in the mix and go from there.

In 2009 I had moved away but we still worked together on my live album. That was a different creature.

So this will be the first time we've worked on a conventional album from a distance.

I did provide him some examples of songs, artists and albums that I like and tried to give him a better idea of what I'm shooting for. I'm excited to hear some of the songs tomorrow and I'll be keeping my fingers crossed!

Thanks again!
Matt

[Doug Young]

That sounds like you made a perfect choice, and his first stab just didn't work out. You never know. The mastering engineer I used on my last CD was really tuned into what I wanted, but I still didn't like the 1st pass, and asked him to make changes (similar issue, I could hear the compression, so I was also asking for "less"). I suspect it's common to have a little back and forth.

[Ty Ford]

I still don't get how the ME altered individual tracks. Did you send him a mix or individual tracks, or both?