Mastering

43 Reasons for Collaborating - Part 1 - Musical Creativity 41

Alan — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:22:07 +0000

A short series of articles on collaborating with other people to make your music better, make it heard or to help them move their music forwards.

1. Recording

1a Engineer

It's so much easier to play, record, change settings, do another take and all those other tasks when there's an extra pair of hands doing the engineering. It means you can focus on feeling comfortable and ensuring that you play to the best of your ability without having to change position and move a microphone, listen to the output, try again, etc. The more you work with an engineer, the more familiar you'll become with their way of working.

1b New outlook

Work with other engineers will remove some of the familiarity of the recording process or familiarity with a particular engineer but will open up new ideas. If you're acting as the engineer for someone else, then it may force you to think back to basics and undo some of your own habits that work well for you in your setting, but no so well for others in their own setting.

1c New kit

Not only do engineers have their preferred choices of recording techniques and equipment, some will have that equipment to hand. It's at the beginning and aspiring levels that it can make more difference since it's at the amateur and semi-pro levels that you're still learning which combinations work best for you. Perhaps you work with an engineer to try out their mics and return the favour later by recording them using your kit. The reciprocal nature opens up new opportunities and learning experiences.

1d Location or studio

Just as the engineer may have kit and techniques, they may also have access to other locations and studios. Want a good drum room, then you're probably better off with a studio, but want a particular type of sound, maybe even just a decent vocal booth and you may have luck with other musicians and engineers.

1e Crowd and audience

If you're thinking of recording a live gig, then the engineer may have access to a different audience (maybe bigger) than you're used to. Lots of live-recording engineers will have regular gigs. Getting a slot in one of those, could provide a ready-made, if not totally accepting, audience.

2. Mixing

2a Remix

Letting someone else mix your tracks has a few of advantages

provides a fresh pair of ears to your music
means you can focus on recording and playing
brings a different tone to your music if you use a mix engineer who has their own sound

Sometimes the mix you have just doesn't work, giving it to a mix engineer may help you out of that rut.

2b Revamp

Think of this being the use of "remix" that's becoming more prevalent nowadays. Hardly mixing in the traditional sense of setting faders, processing and effects, but getting involved in cutting-and-pasting the arrangement. In this case, the re-mixer would be chopping verses up, perhaps interspersing them with samples from elsewhere. Is there a better word for this?

2c Mashups

Taking the revamp approach a step further for a more extreme result.

2d Different mixing skills

There are a few tricks to mixing for 12 inch vinyl. Although many of these may be properly found within the mastering engineer's remit, knowing about them from a mix engineer's perspective will help move things along more quickly.

3. Playing

3a Skill

There are times when you have to admit you can't play an instrument well enough to be able to record what you want to. This is where the session musicians come in. At the more amateur level, it's more about finding a friend or a contact who can do it for you. Just beware of contractual implications if you go that route.

3b Extra Instruments

An extension of 3a, sometimes you just want a different instrument in your recording; one that you can't play. The most common for these would be real violins or cellos to augment sampled strings, or real trumpets or horns to augment brass sections. While you can get friends to fill in, again beware of contractual implications.

3c Vibe and Groove

Different players have different styles of playing. Compare the rock bassist to the jazz/funk bassist. Different styles and often even a different sense of timing. Actually, that should probably read that they can have a different interpretation of timing. By bringing in a musician who can add a different vibe, you can dramatically change the feel of a song.

3d Name and Kudos

This is the guest slot. Having someone with a known name can introduce you to their audience, but also give you the reputation of being able to work with others.

3e Broaden your Horizons

Playing or working with other musicians is a great way to expand your own horizons. Watch what they do, how they set-up, how they approach the gig, what kit they use and how they use it to produce the sounds requested of them. And that's without learning from the notes they play or the phrasing they employ.

Other Pages

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Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

My Home-Grown Mastering Process

Alan — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:47:42 +0000

Introduction

When I master tracks myself, I do it within Logic Pro. I do not delude myself into thinking that the results of my efforts will be better than that of a professional mastering engineer. My view is that that there are times when mastering tracks yourself is the pragmatic choice. In this article, I provide details of my mastering process. This builds on the article about why process mapping is relevant to music and audio.

Process Map

Click the process icon to see the larger, more detailed process map.

The Individual Tracks

After mixing and applying eq for the track itself, I check the stereo-image (especially mono-compatibility), then export the track without dynamic compression at 96Khz/24bit and type 1 dithering, just to handle dithering from Logic's internal bit-depth down to 24bits. There's a lot of debate about whether dithering at this stage is necessary. I'd usually say that if I can't hear the difference, then I don't do make the change, but for some reason, dithering at this stage is one step that I do perform. By exporting at that stage, I receive the clearest version of the source file that I can have.

Putting the Tracks Together

I then import the track into another, empty, Logic Pro Song that I use just for mastering CDs. This is where I'll look at the mix of tracks and applying effects across the CD. I'll apply any eq to even out the tone across the whole CD, automate the fade-in-out levels and pass the mix through a compressor if appropriate.

Once I'm happy with the mastered sound, I export that to the destination format. Assuming it's a CD, then 44.1kHz/16-bit with type 3 dithering (or noise shaping). At the same time, I'll export an mp3, complete with mp3 ID tags.

Burning the CD

I load the CD tracks into Waveburner and burn the CD from there. This involves setting the gap between tracks to 0 seconds since the fade-ins and fade-outs have already been rendered as part of the "mastered" mix from Logic in the previous steps.

Convoluted?

I think my process is too convoluted. I would use Waveburner earlier in the process instead of loading the tracks into the empty Logic Pro track. I did try that route but I was never comfortable with its stability. It just crashed at odd times and I'd have to start again. I found the safest way was to use Logic Pro a second time for arranging all of the tracks together.

Caveat

I'm not advocating that we all should master our own tracks. Mastering engineers have a role to play for finishing your CD or other production.

Why am I publishing this?

I've never seen the process described well enough that it makes any sense. I understand the principles well-enough, I've no problem with that side of things. It's putting those principles into use using the software applications at hand that causes the issues. I've seen snippets of information but they never fully answer when you should dither or not and how, when to compress, etc. I want to encourage debate about the processes we use and I'm volunteering some of mine to get the ball rolling.

Ideally I'd like some of the processes to start tackling the main questions I see on recording forums. Hometracked.com has a list of 7 popular questions which align very closely with what I see as well.

Talk

The process diagram is a bit simplistic, but it should be enough to get the debate started. I can add in the extra detail as conversations progress. Want to share your own processes, let me know.

For more background on process mapping, I've started an online book on the Fundamentals of Process Mapping.

Process Diagram License

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License

What does process mapping have to do with Music, Audio, Photography and Moviemaking?

Alan — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:49:53 +0000

The Short Answer

Everything

The Longer Answer

The longer answer is that every series of actions we perform can be thought of as a process. Understanding those processes will help us improve, even as individuals, whether we're concerned with Music, Audio, Photography, Moviemaking or what have you. I'll discuss each in turn and set the scene for forthcoming articles.

A Basic Process

Making a cup of tea is a process. It's a set of actions that have to be performed in sequence so that the end result, a cup of tea, is achieved. It's quite a complex process when you look at the detail and document it fully. But it's rare that it ever gets documented to that great a level. Occupational Therapists have a test for clients where they see if their client can make a cup of tea. Sometimes, the client forgets to heat the water, other times they forget to put the tea-bag (or other flavouring) in, or forget to put any water in and so on. The number of activities that we take for granted is astronomical yet we know by habit what the sequence of those activities is.

Every process can be mapped. It will take forever and may not be beneficial, but you can map any process. The trick is in deciding which processes to focus on.

Now back to the title, let's look at process mapping and the other facets of this website.

Music and Audio

Can you remember the first time that you compared your home-grown track against a commercial CD? It was quiet, probably very quiet. You may then have learned that you needed to get your tracks mastered. You may have also learned about dynamic compression and if you're still lucky, you treated it with awe as opposed to applying it everywhere and anywhere.

Mastering is a process. Some of the process steps are applying equalisation, manipulating stereo imaging, applying reverb and applying compression.

If you do this on the cheap at home rather than send tracks out to a mastering engineer, you're then into having to dither tracks yourself as well. Similar to the revelation you experienced with the quiet home-grown track, you'll have probably encountered that distortion resulting from when you reduce the bit-depth without dithering.

Where am I going with this?

There's a process in there. For every track, I follow the same process. Think about that. "For every track, I follow the same process."

If I can automate any tasks, I'll improve my situation greatly. Some of the benefits of automating regular tasks:

Save time
Reduce chance of error compared to manually performing the same tasks
Ability to process changes in batch
Ability to schedule changes
Ability to trigger changes based on events (e.g. inserting a card into a card reader)
Achieve consistency in results.

Learning

More important for me is that I can compare my process against that of others and learn from it. It may be that I learn I'm happier with my process than what others are doing, but at least I've decided on keeping my process. I'll go into that process in a bit more depth in a later article.

Music and Audio Recording

What are the steps to recording a track?

Choosing a suitable room, deciding where the musicians will stand, configuring portable acoustic treatments, laying out the microphones and cable, connecting to the recording equipment and so on. All fits into a process.

Look at most questions by recording newbies along the lines of "what's the best way of recording instrument x". They're looking for a description of the process, even though they may not know it. What the more advanced engineer knows is that the key to a lot of the questions is knowing the how the results from the basic processes sound and then figuring out a good solution from there. That solution may include changing the basic process to meet the client's artistic aims. The article on comparing how different pros recorded guitars provides great insight into this area (article is available to subscribers only at the time of writing this article, although I think it's released months after the publication date).

Photography

Digital Photography software is ripe with workflow. It's one of the few subject areas where I've really seen some real progress in workflow and implementing processes that can be used on a regular basis. Some make use of the operating system's specific automation features, e.g. OS X's automator andscript tools are great for this purpose.

Setting up a shoot is a process. Deciding on studio, lighting, props, models, camera bodies, lenses, positions, aperture, etc. All part of a process. On the other side, if you're hiring out studio space to photographers, you probably go through a process, including processing payment, booking and even the clear-up after the shoot. The more you know about your process, the more flexible you can be to client demands without undercharging them.

As a photographer, you shoot out in the field/on location, bring the images back to a computer. Do you:

Wrap-up

In the above text, there are a lot of questions. Largely rhetorical from my point of view. They're present to make us think about how we perform our activities. By analysing the process - or more plainly, just by thinking through the actions that we perform - we can improve how we work.

In the next few related articles, I'll pick up the specific topics and discuss them in more detail. I'll also publish my processes and workflows.

I've started a series on the Fundamentals of Process Mapping for a wider audience but still useful as background to this article.

Mastering Update

Alan — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:44:18 +0000

The main mastering book I referred to in a previous article has been updated. The 2nd edition is out now. Shouldn't be too long before I have a copy, will be longer before I get to finish it though

Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science - Musical Creativity 4

Alan — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 19:03:24 +0000

How to be musically creative - 4

This may seem an odd reference to put in an article on creativity, but bear with me and I'll explain why you should read Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science. First of all, ignore the title. It's not just about mastering. Actually, the more you read it, the more you realise that how neatly the author ties together the creative elements of the recording, mixing and mastering process. No matter what level you're at amateur, hobbyist, semi-pro or pro, the book should have something for you. Oh alright then, I know there are pros who can match the contents, but there are some that should probably read it as a refresher.

Out of all the books and articles around, this book is the one I referred to for the longest time.

Mainly I'd suggest using it to gauge your level of understanding the recording, mixing and mastering process. At the point you don't understand it, re-read the chapter and maybe even the previous chapter. If you're still stuck, then use a search engine to gather some more detail or check Bob Katz's site at Digital Domain.

Put some of the ideas into practice. Ensure you understand compression and what it does to your music. Understanding compression (as with any effect or processor) means you can use it as a tool. Understanding what the tool does will shortcut the time it takes to get the sound in your head out into the world.

Whatever music you do create, you'll need to know where to call in the services of others. Maybe you record and mix your own tracks, maybe even some mastering. After reading the book, at least you'll understand the disadvantages of doing your own mastering.

And perhaps the best piece of the puzzle is understanding stereo recording. When you've read it, try it out.

The book doesn't stop at the simple concepts, instead Bob Katz does an excellent job of explaining some complex ideas, but starting from the basics and building up.
--Updated 2007/12/07 to include 2nd Edition.

Part of a series by Award Sounds offering a selection of creative ideas to kick-start or rejuvenate a composition.

How the pros do it

Alan — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 13:11:14 +0000

Ever wondered how a certain drum track was recorded? Well there are several sites that will get you a lot further than just using your favourite search engine.

GearSlutz Expert Q&A has many interviews with professional mixers, producers, engineers, etc. These have a vast amount of knowledge and between them a bewildering array of hit records.

SoundonSound run a series of articles interviewing producers and arrangers about how they achieved the produced sound track by track.

MixBuss is provided by SSL and has good tips and interviews again from pros.
I'll add more to this as I come across them.