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Learn About Mastering

This page provides an introduction to mastering for those who have not encountered it before, or are unsure of what it is.

The Music Production Process

Music production consists essentially of four major stages:

• Composition
• Recording
• Mixing
• Mastering

Composition: Composition is the process of coming up with the idea for a song, composing the notes, and orchestrating and arranging it. Sometimes composition can also occur during the other music production stages. For example, a singer brought into a studio to add a vocal to a song might be asked to make up their own vocal once they hear the other tracks of the song.

Recording: Recording is the process of recording musicians singing or playing their instruments. It typically takes place in a studio. The output of the recording process is a set of "tracks", one for each musician.

Mixing: Mixing is the process of taking the recorded tracks and mixing them together into a pleasing "Final Mix" consisting of a single track.

Mastering: Mastering is the process of taking the Final Mix and processing it so that it is ready for distribution (e.g. to Spotify and iTunes).

Mastering Is A Separate Stage

You might wonder why mastering is not considered part of the mixing stage. After all, unlike composition and recording, mixing and mastering both involve working on a song within a computer.

Mastering differs from mixing because during mixing, the mixing engineer is focusing on blending the different tracks together. This is an intensively demanding complex task, requiring expertise and balance. In contrast, during the mastering stage, the mastering engineer has just the Final Mix, and is focused exclusively on making it sound good, without being distracted by its various parts, their relationship, or by being tempted to go mess with the mix.

Mastering is the last 10% of the music production process.

Goals Of Mastering

Mastering has several goals:

• Detect and correct any minor problems with the song.
• Balance the frequency spectrum.
• Achieve clarity ("take the blanket off the speakers").
• Achieve commercial loudness.
• Optimise the track for playback on many different systems.
• Add metadata (e.g. ISRC).

But, stepping back again, the ultimate goal of the mastering engineer is to make the song sound wonderful. The definition of "wonderful" will differ from song to song. A song that consists of just a singer and a guitar can be made to sound wonderful by preserving its intimacy during the mastering process, whereas a massive supersaw EDM banger can be made wonderful by making it sound as wide and awesome and loud as possible. But in both cases, the mastering engineer aims to make their client say "wow"!

Similes For Mastering

There are many similes for mastering which can assist you to understand it as a finishing stage in the music production process:

• Mastering is like the icing on a cake.
• Mastering is like sanding and polishing a wooden table.
• Mastering is like cleaning an old painting and applying a layer of lacquer.
• Mastering is like putting on lipstick.
• Mastering is like a chef inspecting each dish and adding finishing touches before it leaves the kitchen.
• Mastering is like adjusting the contrast and brightness of a video.
• Mastering is like washing and waxing a car.
• Mastering is like the box that Apple ships its new iPhones in.
• Mastering is like putting on a clean suit before going out.

Mastering doesn't fundamentally change the nature of the thing being mastered. It just makes it better. But mastering is worthwhile because it can make it SIGNIFICANTLY better!

What Mastering Can Achieve

A problem that mastering engineers have is that music producers sometimes think that the mastering engineer can fix any problems that remain in a song after recording and mixing. Yes, a skilled mastering engineer can fix some minor problems, but the nature of mastering is enhancing, not making fundamental changes. Expecting a mastering engineer to remove a defect in a vocal in a song is like asking a furniture polisher to repair a broken table leg. Nope. They don't have a saw and a hammer. They just have a polishing machine!

In the audio domain, you can expect mastering to make your song sound:

• Louder
• Clearer
• Fuller
• Wider
• Awesome-er (is that a word?) :-)

You should NOT expect the mastering process to:

• Fix a defect in a vocal.
• Move an instrument around in the stereo image.
• Change even one note to a different frequency.
• Add reverb to one instrument.

Some of these things might be possible, but they are primarily mixing tasks, and it's important that a mastering engineer focus exclusively on the overall impact of a song, not its specific details.

Mastering As "A Second Set Of Ears"

Some people are advocates of mastering because they want their song to have "a second set of ears" listening to it before it is distributed. We believe that this advantage of mastering is overstated, or at least misunderstood. What a mastering engineer primarily contributes is an objective technical listening ear, and it's possible for a good mixing engineer to have a good objective technical listening ear too. This said, it is difficult for even an excellent mixing engineer to be objective about a song that they have been mixing for several hours, so either they should take a break for a few days before mastering, or send it immediately to a separate mastering engineer who can start afresh.

One thing that a mastering engineer can bring to a song is earnestness.

Mixing engineers often hang out in the studio during the recording process, kicking the song around, and then retreating to their computer to perform a mixing session in which they manipulate the song in all kinds of creative ways using dozens of effects. One might argue that the relationship of the mixing engineer to a song is fundamentally a creative relationship. Things are possible.

In contrast, by the time a song arrives on the mastering engineers desk, nearly all of the creative decisions have been made, and it's time for the song to face the world! The mastering engineer knows that they are all that stands between the final mix and the world. Whereas the mixing engineer can take risks on the assumption that, if anything is seriously wrong, the mastering engineer will detect the problem and send the track back, the mastering engineer has no such safety net! So mastering engineers have to be careful and earnest in their approach to a song so as not to damage it at the last minute. This requires an earnest careful approach.

The Mandatory Nature Of Mastering

If you are a musician, you might think that your music speaks for itself, and that if you record a song and send it, unmastered, to a record label, that the label executive will be able to detect the quality of the music despite it not being mastered. While this is completely possible, experience has shown (source: Hyperbits Masterclass course) that human nature is such that the executive will be put off by the lack of mastering, even (and perhaps especially) if they don't realise it! They will just get a feeling that the song is not of professional quality.

So, as a musician, before you send your songs out to others for assessment, it's now practically mandatory to master your music first. If you don't, you're missing an important "hygiene" factor in your music. Often you will be able to get away with your own home-made mastering, and that is probably far better than no mastering at all, but if you want it to shine, you either have to study mastering yourself, or engage a trained professional.

Start Your Mastering Journey

This page has provided an idea of what mastering is, and why it is important in music production. If you want your music to shine, mastering (in some form) is essential. If you agree, then you have several options:

• Pay a mastering engineer (such as Crickets Mastering) to master your music.
• Use an automated online mastering service (such as LANDR).
• Use a mastering plugin (such as iZotope Ozone).
• Master your song yourself using mastering plugin (see Mastering Tips Page).
• Become a professional mastering engineer by doing a course (such as at mastering.com).

If you want to learn more about how to master your own songs, the following pages might be helpful:

• Mastering Tips
• Mastering Resources