Mastering

In this assignment I have been given three of Kipras' tracks to master. When I received the pre masters there was something wrong with all three of them. There was no headroom to work with and all three of them were heavily limited. I also noticed one of the song's vocals sounded too distant. I e-mailed Kipras to send me the same tracks with 6dB of headroom in each track and nothing in the output master such as limiter, compressor, EQ, distortion, etc and I also told him to use a 320kbps reference track so that he can get the correct balance of Huseyin's vocals before he sends it to me. I asked him to do these things because the limiter was messing up the dynamics of each song and the dynamics are an important thing to work with especially in the mastering stage. I told him to make the vocals louder in one of his mixes because the vocals is an important part of a song. People like listening to the vocals of a song and it's important to hear what the singer/rapper is saying, plus, the vocals is what brings a song to life.

Empathy Slow - Old School Love - I mastered this song at home using FL Studio. I used this daw because most of my mastering plugins live on that daw and I can work with this daw with ease. I dragged the pre master onto FL and I listened to it to make some decisions on what needs to be changed. I noticed the kick was too bassy and was the most overpowering thing in the mix. So I used an EQ and reduce the thump of the kick and reduce some of the lo end so that the kick is balanced and is allowing the other instruments to cut through. I made sure there was still some lo end because this track is a uptempo house track and this genre of music needs some lo end so that people can dance to it. I used another parametric band to make the body of the track stronger because the body of the track wasn't strong enough and needed boosting. The body of the track is another important thing in electronic music because the body of a electronic track give the track life and energy and this was an important key thing for me to do.

After using EQ I used compression and I used compression to glue the peaks and make the waveform balanced in volume. With the peaks compressed it will be easier to make the song louder as everything will be balanced and level. I used a slow attack because I wanted to let the transients punch through and the transients are an important thing in a song and if the transients were compressed the song's dynamics will have no breathing space and everything will be squashed too much. I used a fast release and I used a fast release because I wanted the compressor to work fast. I didn't want the compressor working slow because a slow release will compress the song for too long and this can lead to over-compressing and it will mess up the song's dynamics. So it was important to keep the release short. Finally I used a small ratio and small threshold and I used the parameters this way because I wanted a small amount of these parameters so that I can compress the peaks of the song and make sure they are levelled out and this way it will be easier to make the waveform look like a brick wall.

I then used stereo spread on the song because it didn't sound wide and using stereo spread is a good way of making a track louder and wider. I wanted this song to have a wide sound because stereo spread adds more energy to a track, especially a electronic track. I used the stereo width parameter and I listened very carefully as I was pushing it because I didn't want too much stereo spread. Too much stereo spread can lead to a track sounding out of phase and I didn't want this sound for this song. I wanted to make this song sound as wide as possible without making the song sound out of phase and this is why I opened my ears and listened very carefully to what sounded wide enough and what sounded out of phase.

After using stereo spread I used a plugin called 'Fruity Blood Overdrive' and this plugin is used to amplify the frequencies in the song and make them louder and this plugin only distorts a song when too much pre amp gain is used. I only used the pre amp gain to make the song louder and as I was doing this I listened very carefully to the song as I was pushing so that if it starts distorting I can reduce a bit of the pre amp gain and make sure it's loud but not distorting. My target was to make the song hit zero constantly throughout the song and the blood overdrive wasn't enough but I knew if I put a bit more the song will distort and the song will sound crushed.

The last thing I did is use a limiter to make sure the song is playing at one level and compress the peaks a little bit more. I used the limiter by over-processing it and I over-processed it by by turning the output to -20dB and turning the gain by 20dB. I then turned the release to zero so that I can listen to the horrendous distortion and from there I would push the release until I can no longer hear the song distorting. After pushing the right amount of release I would reset the gain and output to zero and I over-processed the gain again so that I can listen to the song heavily limited and reduce the gain until the song sounded stable and not heavily limited.

Empathy Slow - You and Me - I listened to next track and I noticed this track had more lo end than the first track and this overpowered everything else in the song. So I shelved out more lo end than the first song because I wanted to make the frequencies balanced but I made sure I didn't shelf out too much lo end because this song needed some lo end as this track is an uptempo dance track. I then used 3 parametric bands and these bands were used to reduce the thump of the kick, make the Huseyin's vocals louder and make the body of the track stronger. I used these parametric bands this way so that I can make the song sound well balanced in and give the song more life. The last thing I used is a hi shelf and I used this band to make the song sound cleaner and brighter. It sounded dull and muffled without the hi shelf and I didn't want this sound for the final finish.

I used more compression than the first track because the more peaks in this track and they were a bit bigger. I set up the parameters the same way I set them in the first song but I used a lower threshold so that I can squash the peaks as much as I can. However, if I listened to the song being compressed too hard I would need to make bring threshold up a bit and make sure the song doesn't sound compressed and that the dynamics have some breathing space and the transients are not being squashed. I noticed the compressor gave more headroom and I wanted the song to play at roughly -6dB and I did this by using very little make up gain to ensure the song was playing at that level.

After using EQ and compression I used the same plugins from the first song to add the final touches to the second song and I repeated the same steps of using the limiter because over-processing the limiter is a good way getting the right amount of limiting and making sure the limiter isn't working too hard, plus it's useful for glueing the peaks more.

Technusk - In the third song was tiny bit bassy and subby. So this meant I didn't have to shelf out much. I only had to shelf out a little bit of the lo end to make sure the bass level wasn't drowning the the other instruments and sounds. I used two parametric bands to reduce a very little amount kick drums' thump and make the body of song more lively and finally I used a lo pass filter to cut of some of the hi end because the hi end sounded very harsh and piercing and this isn't the sound I wanted for the finished master.

I then used very little compression because there wasn't many peaks in this song. I parameter I changed is the threshold. I used a small threshold because I didn't need to squash the peaks that much and there wasn't many peaks to squash. Like the first two songs, I made sure dynamics had breathing space, the transients not being compressed and making sure the compressor wasn't squashing everything hard. I then used a tiny bit of make up gain to make sure the song was playing at -6dB.

From there I used the same plugins from the first track to add the final finishing touches before bouncing all three finished masters individually and burning them into a cd.