Helicon1,

I think that has been the general overview of this discussion. It's not that it is impossible for other people like us to learn the art of mastering, infact, we can become as good as the best out there if we are willing to work at it and "take care of our ears". But the fact remains that you need 3 positives to equal great.

The Knowhow + The Equipment + The room

I believe I'm gaining valuable knowledge in The knowhow, yet, I have a way to go for The equipment and The room.

Do you see what I mean?

You can be the best homerun hitter on your team, but if go to bat without a bat, believe me, you are not going to hit one out of the ball park. You might break a few bones and get it past the catcher, but that's it. Even using the wrong bat (barrel size, length and weight) will give you trouble.

I will continue to learn The knowhow. Yet, I won't do my own stuff until I have the other 2 positives.

Helicon1

You are correct. We all had to start at the bottom and work our way up the ladder of learning how to be mastering or recording engineers.

In my case it has taken over 30 years of my life.

Unfortunately many people DON'T want to take the time or expend the energy to learn what they are doing. They want to purchase their knowledge in a box of software or a black box and let that do their thinking for them.

I have been a GC and Sam Ash and have seen this a million times. The customer wants to start doing his own recording or mastering. The salesmen is only too happy to help this person realize his or her dreams (and make a fat commission on the side) . They sell them lots of software and/or lots of blackboxes and tell them "hey go home install this (insert brand name) and you will be turning out your own Grammy winning material by this afternoon"

Sorry it just does not work this way.

Nor does it work when someone decides that they want to be a mastering engineer for their latest project and goes and purchases some black box or software package thinking that by doing so they are going to "save myself a lot of money" and "hey the salesmen said this was really easy" It is FALSE economy and nothing good ever comes easy or fast (unless you win the lottery).

Mastering is something that takes time to master (forgive the pun) and takes really good equipment with a really good monitoring environment to do well.

I personally welcome people that are trying to learn mastering. Good mastering engineers are hard to find and we need more people that are willing to undertake the time and trouble to really learn what it is all about. If you attend a mastering session with a really good engineer he or she may make it look fairly simple, twist a couple of knobs, listen and twist some more and presto you material is mastered. What you don't see is the hours and hours trying to solve problems or the time spent listening to literally thousands of mixes to get where they are in their career.

If you want to master your own material do so. If you want it done well and you don't want to learn how to do it take your project to a professional mastering engineer who has the equipment and the knowledge to do a GREAT job with your material.

If you want to learn how to be a mastering engineer welcome but realize that this is something you are not going to learn overnight or by reading a book or purchasing the latest black box at your local MI retailer. It is not something you want to do QUICKLY and certainly not something you can master (excuse the pun) in time to have you to do the mastering on your bands latest CD release which the band just finished recording and is do for release next month. It just is NOT going to happen.

MTCW

Tom and Dan,

I completely agree with you about everything you said. I also stressed in my post that it took putting in the hours and working hard to be good. It's the same with any endeavor.

If someone is learning to play guitar, it takes lots of practice to become really good. But that shouldn't be held up as a reason for him never to start practicing. Someone wishing to learn mastering will usually not be given much outside work, because the clients would rather have an experienced engineer master their stuff. So it stands to reason that most of the only things they will be able to learn on is their own stuff. To say that mastering should be left to the pros until you know what you're doing, how are you EVER going to know what you are doing? It's like telling that guitar player that he shouldn't practice until he really knows what he is doing. It's a catch-22. They will NEVER know what they are doing without practice.

Do you see where I'm coming from?

I think that books written by accomplished, knowledgeable professionals are an invaluable resource to someone trying to learn. Recording forums like this one are excellent places to grow.

I totally agree with you that it is not an overnight success. It DOES take time. But how in the world are they supposed to get good at something without starting anything?

Helicon1

You are fundamentally correct. You need to work on material in order for you to learn. One problem is that if it is indeed "your material" then many times you will not be objective when you listen to it to do the mastering.

It has been my observation that people get so wrapped up in their projects that they gloss over many obvious problems. I have gotten mastering in with noises in the material with wrong notes being played, with off pitch singing and playing and with, in one case, a father yelling down the stairs "how many times do I have to tell you to turn it down" right in the middle of the song. Now when I listen to this with fresh ears I don't know all the history or the emotional baggage that came with the recording of this music. All I know is what I am hearing or not hearing. I don't know that the lead singer is going though a messy divorce or that the drummer, who is carpenter by day, messed up his hand the day before his tracks were laid down. I also don't know that halfway though the tracking sessions the microphone fell to the floor and got a big dent in the side which caused it to have "problems" All I know is what is being presented to me from the speakers.

It is amazing to have people come in a really listen to their material on really good equipment in an acoustically designed room. They suddenly hear things that they never heard before. They hear the cars going by the garage or the birds chirping outside the basement window. They hear vacuum cleaners or a chain saw that they "missed" when they were doing the recording and or the mixing. They also hear things like phase shift or bad panning or buried vocals that they never heard before. It is a very "ear opening" experience for them.

When I was a classical recording engineer in my former life I did recordings on a daily basis. I had good equipment and good monitors but not a great room to listen to them in. When I listen to some of the recordings I did then, I cringe. I hear things I never heard before, AC noise, footfalls in the hall outside the venue, slight phase or miking problems.

This is the reason why it is sooooooo important to go somewhere else to do your mastering with someone who has a fresh set of ears, a great monitoring enviornment and can listen with no prejudice to what you have done. If you try and do your own mastering you are bringing to the table a whole set of pre conceived ideas and with a whole lot of emotional baggage that will cloud your overall judgment of the music. You simply cannot divorce YOURself from YOUR music and it is this attachment that will cloud your judgment everytime.

MTCW

starmusicdigital wrote: I hate to burst your bubble, but what if you did come accross someone who did everything on their own and had a vast knowladge of mastering and enjoyed it, and was selling thousands of cd's and knew everything about recording, at a recording degree level. and they also cracked there own software and did everything at low cost.

What would you say to that?

You have to read the post again. First off, being able to do everything on your own is quite a task. Doing every well is another story. Vast knowledge of anything is quite amazing. knows everything about recording at a recording degree level? what does that mean? I didn't know hardly anything coming out of school compared to years and years and years of hands on training and learning. Cracked their own software? huh? what does that have to do with mastering? If that's all someone has is cracked software and thinks that's what it's all about makes the point stronger.

Sure, everyone has to learn somewhere. We all did and still do. It's another thing to say i'm as good as XYZ because I went to school and I have some plugins. I'm all for learning and improving, but don't be so bold as to say I know everything.

I totally understand and agree with you, Tom. It is always best to have someone else master if you have done the tracking and mixing. There's no doubt about it.

But they still have to have something to master in order to be a good mastering engineer.

I master my own stuff. Most of the time I try to have a few more discerning ears in the room with me to help out with keeping things objective. Like I mentioned earlier, it would be great if I could afford the best mastering in the world, but I can't. I have no doubt that a high-end mastering engineer could make at least a slight difference in the sound of my recordings.

But I am at the point where I'm gaining on them. I have no trouble getting airplay on several local and regional radio stations. I have artists signed to my small label that receive regular airplay. So my quality doesn't suffer all that much.

I am a fanatic about getting the right sound, and I spend hours on most every mix and master to get it to the point where it is the best it can be.

I have never had one person at any radio station say that my work is unprofessional or not up to snuff.

When I can afford an outstanding mastering engineer, I will definitely let him do the mastering. Until then, I'll continue to learn and grow by hands-on training simply out of financial necessity.

I understand where you are coming from. Many people don't want to take the time to do things right they only want to do things quickly and get on to the next project.

In one of your earlier post you said...

"So how can anyone suggest that someone else can't do the exact same thing that THEY did. Do they think they are the last of the Mohicans? Are they just somehow smarter and more talented than anyone else? Do they believe that no other person could possibly learn the same things that they know?

Anyone who wants to put the time in and apply themselves (and has at least some talent or aptitude) can reach "

In all fairness NOT everyone can make a good mastering engineer. You have to be able to translate what you are hearing into a plan of action and some people seem incapable of doing this. It is not because they are not smart or not knowledgeable enough it is simply because they cannot use the right and left brain together to get what they want from the music. It is not mystical and their are no secret incantation or spells used and I don't wear a black pointed hat when I do mastering BUT I do know how to get the best out of the music with the tools at my command and that takes time and talent. So yes almost anyone could become a good mastering engineer if they took the time and had the necessary skills but there are also a lot of people out there that cannot do what I and others on this list do on a daily basis because somewhere they cannot make the connection between what they are hearing and what they want to do or because they cannot hear properly what they are trying to change.

A case in point. I just got doing some reggae clients. They were great to work with but could not understand the difference between what they were hearing here in the mastering studio and what the material would sound like in the real world. It was a long uphill battle which I finally won when they listened to a couple of different mastering options on other listening equipment. If I had done what they wanted me to do (or if they had decided to master their own stuff) they would have been very disappointed in the sound quality they would have gotten when they played it back in other rooms and clubs. These same guys recorded and mixed their own music and when it came time to master it came to me for my expertise. Even when they came here they wanted me to make their music more and more bass heavy since that is the "sound" they were after. However lots of bass here does not necessarily translate into lots of good clean bass when played on a club system or a boom box with the smiley eq and the bass boost on.

I think we are seeing eye to eye on this but not everyone is as talented and serious about doing things right as you seem to be and those are the people I worry about because it is also those people who hang a sign on the door that says mastering done here.....and no one is the wiser!

Best of luck!

You're absolutely right about that.

You have to have ears - and taste. I have had the same experience that you describe many times myself when recording rap and R&B artists. And just like you did, I practiced some gentle persuasion until they saw things my way. I hate to let anything get out of my studio that doesn't sound right. I have a standing policy that I don't give scratch mixes to artists.

starmusicdigital wrote: I hate to burst your bubble, but what if you did come across someone who did everything on their own and had a vast knowledge of mastering and enjoyed it, and was selling thousands of cd's and knew everything about recording, at a recording degree level. and they also cracked there own software and did everything at low cost.

What would you say to that?

I say if you are "cracking" software you were a thief.

I do hope you wanted to hear the truth.....but of course you did ask.

No one should steal someone else's intellectual property for any reason. Software companies are in business to provide a product people want and need at a reasonable cost and to make some money so they can continue to provide top quality software for years to come. If people steal their intellectual property then they will soon go out of business because no one will need to purchase their software since it is all over the web in Warez sites.

If you don't agree about paying the price there are alternatives including shareware and freeware and upgrading from another product that you already own.

As for selling thousands of CDs and doing everything on your own- your point was?

I too "enjoy" mastering but then of course that is my profession and I don't use cracked or pirated software to do what I do. If you are a professional (and I am not sure that one who admits to pirating software can be called a professional) then you need to spend some money to make some money and not steal someone else's hard work and not pay for it. I wonder what you think about copyrights for the music you perform or record. Is it fair that someone steal your material and not pay for it?

Hope you were ready for a truthful answer to your question.

I know what you mean. I guess they never asked themselves: why is it that every major recording is never mastered by the artist themselves :)

I only pseudo-master my quick DEMO. If I am doing a demo for a mjor, or major indie i'll have it professionally mastered.

People *think* they can do many things...

Having said that, with judicious use the current batch of software (NOT CHEAP) may help in making a pseudo-master for those who don't have the budget for a real mastering studio.

Another problem is that now many equate mastering to slamming the track and it is NOT about that. While you want the tracks to be at healthy levels you don't want to rob them of their dynamics. Finally, a slammed track causes listening fatigue very quickly.

Hello...I see that there's a lot of new "engineers" in this new world. I've been engineering for over 25yrs and still learning.

I learn that if Im investing $ in a production I need to have $ for the most critical step... MASTERING.Have few gold & platinum albums under my belt inclusive a Grammy. That give's me some not power but at least I understand "that I paid my dues..."and also put me in a different perpective of the production side.
I always been using a mastering engineer because he can get more of me than myself.Is a big satisfaction when your product get finished by one of the big guys like Bob Katz or G. Marino and you hear thing that you never expect to be there. Like all the fullness that your speakers(and ears) doesn't give you because the enviroment. I had the opportunity to work and be in session few times with this "magic dudes"and is a great feeling when you see that your masterpiece is been enhanced and the music comes out of the speakers.

http://www.jetsailsound.com

digitmstr wrote: I know what you mean. I guess they never asked themselves: why is it that every major recording is never mastered by the artist themselves :)

I only pseudo-master my quick DEMO. If I am doing a demo for a major, or major indie I'll have it professionally mastered.

People *think* they can do many things...

Having said that, with judicious use the current batch of software (NOT CHEAP) may help in making a pseudo-master for those who don't have the budget for a real mastering studio.

Another problem is that now many equate mastering to slamming the track and it is NOT about that. While you want the tracks to be at healthy levels you don't want to rob them of their dynamics. Finally, a slammed track causes listening fatigue very quickly.

The problem is that a lot of people who say they cannot "afford" to have their stuff professionally mastered settle for pseudo-mastering and think that is the real thing. (People seem to think that all mastering engineers charge $400.00 and hour (i.e. Bob Ludwig's rate) which is just simply NOT TRUE)

I have a couple of really good friends who are recording engineers. They get requests all the time from their clients to "master" their material so they don't have to pay someone else to do their mastering. Both of them refuse saying that they do not want to master since they are not mastering engineers and that they have a good friend, me, who does a great job for a reasonable rate.

There are other studios in town who say that they MASTER the songs as they are mixing them down and charge a fee for doing so. There are also recording studios around who try and do mastering to make up for the lost revenues that they have incurred since everyone now seems to have a bedroom studio. One gentlemen, I know of, does his mastering with a Mackie Mixer and an Aleisis compressor, and charges his clients a fat fee for basically ruining their mixes.

These pseudo-mastering studios can do a really BAD job on the mastering and people can get so upset and say they never want to have their stuff mastered again.

If the people who try and do pseudo-mastering would do what they do best and leave the real mastering to the people that do it day in and day out and have the tools and the monitoring environment and the experience to do it well life would be a whole lot simpler.

If people THINK they can master their own stuff and do a good job on it then they should do it. If they want it done to professional standards and have a good set of ears doing it then go to a professional mastering engineer and pay for their expertise.

I don't know why this concept is so hard for people to understand.

Perhaps if this is taken from the other direction the immensity of the task of "learning" will be clearer.

What if an engineer/producer decided he was tired of hiring musicians to come in and play and decided to simply buy a few instruments to augment the samples/MIDI stuff? You know, put some real "human element" into the endeavor? And would it help the learning curve to buy the very best instruments available?

How quickly could he turn out stuff that was comparable to what the studio musicians who were charging for their abilities were able to do?

Rich

Sonarerec wrote: Perhaps if this is taken from the other direction the immensity of the task of "learning" will be clearer.

What if an engineer/producer decided he was tired of hiring musicians to come in and play and decided to simply buy a few instruments to augment the samples/MIDI stuff? You know, put some real "human element" into the endeavor? And would it help the learning curve to buy the very best instruments available?

How quickly could he turn out stuff that was comparable to what the studio musicians who were charging for their abilities were able to do?

Rich

Well said.... :!: Nice website as well. Clearly written, visually pleasing and informative.

Can I learn how to master? Yes.....Will I? No.

I won't rebuild a transmission or shingle a house either, even though I already can. If I was to do everything I am able to do.....which is impossible time wise, I would never be able to improve in my music. My musical skills would erode and the music is what this is all about for me. IMHO $400-$600 for a completely pro spec cd master by a professional is a bargain. I'm just a middle class working man, however I don't call a plumber when I need a root canal.

Just my view of what works for me.

chimmy

i have learned to "master" out of necessity, when i started i didnt really want to do anything other than write and record... but i didnt have anything to record on so i jacked beats, but being the paranoid person i am i figured i should make my own beats and one thing lead to another and now i do my whole album top down including printing and labeling and blah blah, but as we get more money, we plan to get things professionally mastered and pressed because it is just too time consuming to do everything alone (even though you do make more money_.

If you want it bad enough you'll make it happen, and for those people down at the bottom like me i started a section on my oard dedicated to the resouces i've run through and use myself

http://www.silverpharoah.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=16

as i grew and began working with other people I had to make better products because it wasnt just for me anymore. We're not top notch butwe're getting there. Most of the locals that go to studios are getting cheated out of their money, i dont charge by the hr i charge by the project, because being an artist myself who handles all the self promotion including the website, graphics, design equipment, bills and everything...... its hard, so i value what i spend my money on, and i think everyone should be the same.

i've gone from a small piano and 2 tape decks, spitting into an earpiece hooked into the mic jack...... to working on a computer with various software aplications and a headset, to burning and manufacturing my own projects and making a little money, to buying many of the software applications and now buying hardware......all within 2 years..... you just have to have a game plan, and mastering perfects your product.