I let you guys know at the end of '08 that I got a little label deal with a company distributed by Fontana Universal. I've been grinding real hard on about 6 possible singles. I've been at the mixing stage with a couple of them for about 3 weeks now. The first one I recently sent off to be mastered, well what can I say...."U learn something new all the time"............
ILL fam...the mix before you get your music mastered is KEY.....short comings at this stage will severely affect what the Mastering Engineer can do.
EMAIL AFTER I CORRECTED THE VOX LEVELS THAT WERE 2db too loud, track was resubmitted for mastering:
ENGINEER: This version was definitely better to work with, and I've been working on it throughout the day because it was a little tough getting it to sound the way I wanted, so I wanted to give you my thoughts on the mix, as I definitely focused more on it as I was working with it.
The mix overall has a muddiness that I had to get rid off; the drums are not punching much on this mix and it's hard to say what the root cause of it is; it could be in the way the tracks were recorded and/or mixed. From mastering on neutral systems, sometimes we mastering guys can tell usually where there's a deficiency at least at the monitoring stage (which is where a lot of problems stem from, since most people don't have properly-treated rooms to work with and boost/cut due to problems with the room and/or monitors). On your mix, I noticed there was a lot of excess low end, which is part of the reason why the kicks/bass on the mix wasn't as punchy. There was also a bit of cutting I had to do around the 300Hz range, this tells me that there's probably an issue at your monitoring position around that range, since a dip there can cause you to overcompensate and boost around that range. Beyond this, I can only speculate because as I said, there's a lot that can happen while tracking and then at mixing.
I also noticed there's a bit of harshness around the lower midrange on this track, again, I'm not sure what may be the cause of this. It could be a slight overload of the converters while tracking or mixing, but it definitely sounds a little "crunched". This is something that I can't do much about as it's already part of the mix; a lot of times it can be introduced while compressing and other transient "squashing" effects; I noticed it came up a little more as I cleared the "mud" from the low end on your mix.
Overall, I feel it's a decent master, and 70% of my part when working on this mix was tone correction; from experience, the best masters are when my work is a higher percentage of working to maintain a good mix's dynamic range while bringing up all the levels
NOW!
I drop'd this to say this. This guys is truly on his game. I don't have a massive budget but look at the type of info. this guy is dropping. He's dropping jewels that will only help me mix my songs better. The lingo is so on point that without asking him what he meant I can cut and paste key words out of this email and google them to get there meaning and find out what I need to do to correct this.
What I can tell you from my experience...
1) Get that low end in check and I'm not talking about what you can hear. Use a frequency analyzer and roll that shit off 48-50khz. Drop the level down past what you think it should be!!! If it's the least bit bass intensive cut and and drop the level.
2) Especially for hip hop/rap...make sure you use the highest quality sounds you can for your bass and kicks. Layer them joints and make sure they hit because if they don't hit in the mix, they won't hit after mastering! Once again, I'm not talking about just the volume on those faders. A soft or weak sounding kick won't be helped by pumping up the volume. I had to got back, find a better sounding kick and get that joint in the right frequency range before I layered an additional kick by way of Drumagog under it. Oh yeah...."Drumagog", get it in your life!
3) that cutting he had to do in the 300 hz range was exactly because of what he said it could be, "monitoring position", of course I already new that but hell....I had to work with what I have. The thing is that if you know (and now I do) where the weak spot is in your listening area you can compensate for it. The mix after I corrected things is now my reference for any other song I mix that is similar in style to this one. I know not to boost in that range for any reason what so ever. If it sounds as though I need a boost there, thru trial an error I know based on my listening environment, "DON'T DO IT" .
4) the harshness at the lower midrange, I couldn't see it nor hear it. Neither could he when he initially listened to the mix. After ripping my track apart and watching every freaking meter whether it be a fader or plugin meter I found it. Though my master was reading -6db, most of the plugin meters were close to 0db. A definite "NO NO" in the digital realm.....didn't know it then....know it now!
Basically what I did was go back and mix the entire song again but it didn't take as long because I was armed with knowledge. On the second mix I made sure no peak meter, whether track level or plugin "OUT" went above -6db. Every track, every instrument, every vocal. Nothing exceeded -6db. I learned not to record anything into your project past the -6db mark. I thought that if you didn't clip 0db it was all good, "wrong".
We have to get the "loudness" of thing out of our work flow. Especially if you want to take your music to the next level and for most of us that next level is getting your baby Mastered so you can truly hear how it sounds side by side with the big boyz!
Here's a link that helped me tremendously http://www.eqmag.com/article/mix-bus-how/feb-08/33427...that along with having a good Mastering engineer that's not afraid to share his knowledge will make my next track to be mastered even better. For those of you that have the Waves PAZ Analyzer or something similar USE IT. Throw that bad boy on your master fader so you can monitor frequency, the stereo field and peak meters! RMS is not your friend when mixing for mastering.
ILL fam...the mix before you get your music mastered is KEY.....short comings at this stage will severely affect what the Mastering Engineer can do.
EMAIL AFTER I CORRECTED THE VOX LEVELS THAT WERE 2db too loud, track was resubmitted for mastering:
ENGINEER: This version was definitely better to work with, and I've been working on it throughout the day because it was a little tough getting it to sound the way I wanted, so I wanted to give you my thoughts on the mix, as I definitely focused more on it as I was working with it.
The mix overall has a muddiness that I had to get rid off; the drums are not punching much on this mix and it's hard to say what the root cause of it is; it could be in the way the tracks were recorded and/or mixed. From mastering on neutral systems, sometimes we mastering guys can tell usually where there's a deficiency at least at the monitoring stage (which is where a lot of problems stem from, since most people don't have properly-treated rooms to work with and boost/cut due to problems with the room and/or monitors). On your mix, I noticed there was a lot of excess low end, which is part of the reason why the kicks/bass on the mix wasn't as punchy. There was also a bit of cutting I had to do around the 300Hz range, this tells me that there's probably an issue at your monitoring position around that range, since a dip there can cause you to overcompensate and boost around that range. Beyond this, I can only speculate because as I said, there's a lot that can happen while tracking and then at mixing.
I also noticed there's a bit of harshness around the lower midrange on this track, again, I'm not sure what may be the cause of this. It could be a slight overload of the converters while tracking or mixing, but it definitely sounds a little "crunched". This is something that I can't do much about as it's already part of the mix; a lot of times it can be introduced while compressing and other transient "squashing" effects; I noticed it came up a little more as I cleared the "mud" from the low end on your mix.
Overall, I feel it's a decent master, and 70% of my part when working on this mix was tone correction; from experience, the best masters are when my work is a higher percentage of working to maintain a good mix's dynamic range while bringing up all the levels
NOW!
I drop'd this to say this. This guys is truly on his game. I don't have a massive budget but look at the type of info. this guy is dropping. He's dropping jewels that will only help me mix my songs better. The lingo is so on point that without asking him what he meant I can cut and paste key words out of this email and google them to get there meaning and find out what I need to do to correct this.
What I can tell you from my experience...
1) Get that low end in check and I'm not talking about what you can hear. Use a frequency analyzer and roll that shit off 48-50khz. Drop the level down past what you think it should be!!! If it's the least bit bass intensive cut and and drop the level.
2) Especially for hip hop/rap...make sure you use the highest quality sounds you can for your bass and kicks. Layer them joints and make sure they hit because if they don't hit in the mix, they won't hit after mastering! Once again, I'm not talking about just the volume on those faders. A soft or weak sounding kick won't be helped by pumping up the volume. I had to got back, find a better sounding kick and get that joint in the right frequency range before I layered an additional kick by way of Drumagog under it. Oh yeah...."Drumagog", get it in your life!
3) that cutting he had to do in the 300 hz range was exactly because of what he said it could be, "monitoring position", of course I already new that but hell....I had to work with what I have. The thing is that if you know (and now I do) where the weak spot is in your listening area you can compensate for it. The mix after I corrected things is now my reference for any other song I mix that is similar in style to this one. I know not to boost in that range for any reason what so ever. If it sounds as though I need a boost there, thru trial an error I know based on my listening environment, "DON'T DO IT" .
4) the harshness at the lower midrange, I couldn't see it nor hear it. Neither could he when he initially listened to the mix. After ripping my track apart and watching every freaking meter whether it be a fader or plugin meter I found it. Though my master was reading -6db, most of the plugin meters were close to 0db. A definite "NO NO" in the digital realm.....didn't know it then....know it now!
Basically what I did was go back and mix the entire song again but it didn't take as long because I was armed with knowledge. On the second mix I made sure no peak meter, whether track level or plugin "OUT" went above -6db. Every track, every instrument, every vocal. Nothing exceeded -6db. I learned not to record anything into your project past the -6db mark. I thought that if you didn't clip 0db it was all good, "wrong".
We have to get the "loudness" of thing out of our work flow. Especially if you want to take your music to the next level and for most of us that next level is getting your baby Mastered so you can truly hear how it sounds side by side with the big boyz!
Here's a link that helped me tremendously http://www.eqmag.com/article/mix-bus-how/feb-08/33427...that along with having a good Mastering engineer that's not afraid to share his knowledge will make my next track to be mastered even better. For those of you that have the Waves PAZ Analyzer or something similar USE IT. Throw that bad boy on your master fader so you can monitor frequency, the stereo field and peak meters! RMS is not your friend when mixing for mastering.
