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Masters of the universe |
Why do some records sound amazing, and others just suck? I'm not talking about bad bands, or bad songs, or bad studios. Why is it that your record sounds muffled and quiet, when the latest Hear'Say atrocity sounds like it was recorded by God? The first and most obvious reason is: Hear'Say have more money than you. But there's another reason, and you can do something about it. You can get your music mastered by someone who knows what they're doing. Mastering is something of a black art. You send your CD off to a mastering engineer and it comes back sounding different - and you don't know why. For all you know, he could be sacrificing a goat and invoking demons in his quest for perfect sonic fidelity. In some cases that's exactly what happens, but for most records the magic of mastering is much more mundane - but no less effective. Before we get into the details, it's important to know what mastering can and cannot do. If a song is well recorded, mastering can make it sound bigger, better and brighter. If the song's a bit weedy, mastering can toughen it up. If your acoustic song is louder than your pastiche of Norwegian Death Metal, mastering can sort that out too. Here's what mastering can't do: it can't fix a bad song, or a bad performance. It can't make your singer sing in tune, or your band play in time. And it can't fix a bad mix. In other words: you can polish a diamond, but you can't polish a turd. The basics For simplicity's sake, we'll talk about mastering in the context of recording an EP in a studio and getting it professionally pressed. You don't have to use a studio and you don't have to use a pressing plant; the principles are the same no matter what way you decide to make your records. Mastering is a small part of a big picture:
There is some overlap between these - the engineer will do some mixing while you're recording, and many studios do some mastering during the final mix - but mastering and mixing are two different things. Mixing is the process of turning your recording into a finished track; mastering is the process of turning all your finished tracks into something that's ready to go to the pressing plant. What mastering does Mastering does four main things:
All four are pretty simple, although there's the inevitable jargon to deal with. I'll explain each step in more detail. Topping and tailing Topping and tailing means fixing the beginning and the end of each track. That could mean adding a long fade at the end of the song, or getting rid of the drummer's shouted "wuntoofreefar!" at the beginning of it. The engineer will also look for "spikes" - unwanted clicks and pops that occasionally crop up on recordings - and get shot of them. Sorting out the volume If you've got more than one song, you need to have sensible volumes for each track. Mastering engineers will increase the volume of tracks that are too quiet, and reduce the volumes of those that are too loud. It's not just an aesthetic thing (although that's important too) - unlike tape, digital music (such as CDs) can't be driven too loud or you'll get what's known by engineers as "clipping distortion", a nasty and abrasive clicking that makes your ears bleed, blows up speakers and so on. There's some overlap between this and compression, because compressors are one way of preventing the volume from exceeding the maximum. If done correctly, the volume of your CD shouldn't change dramatically between songs. It avoids the situation where someone who's bought your CD has to turn the stereo right up to hear the first song, only for the second song to make them fill their pants in terror. Unless that's the effect you want, of course. EQ, Compression and other goodies This is where the magic and goat sacrifices come in. Through a combination of EQ (equalisation), compression, stereo expanders, aural exciters (a piece of studio equipment rather than a sex toy), DeEssing and other effects, the mastering engineer can make your song sound bigger, punchier and brighter. For detailed explanations of what these different things do, find an engineer and buy him or her a pint; for a quick description, read on. EQ EQ is your basic bass, middle, treble, and it's used to make the bass louder or the treble less harsh. Needless to say, mastering engineers don't just have a tone control - they can isolate and boost specific frequencies that are audible only to dogs, or remove the low-frequency rumble that makes your bass sound a bit too boomy. There shouldn't be too much difference in EQ between different songs, though, or your CD will sound as if it's been recorded by several different bands in several different studios. Compression Compression is used on almost every record you hear, and it's damned clever. What compression does is boost certain frequencies and limit others, or boost the overall volume of a track. For example, heavy compression makes distorted guitars sound massive. It's also great on drums. It's very difficult to describe - essentially it makes a song sound louder, and you'll hear it used on anything from Britney Spears to Limp Bizkit records. It can also be overused: again, hard to describe but if a song's over-compressed it makes you feel as if your ears are popping. Other goodies Many records now use a thing called an "exciter", which adds harmonics to the high frequencies of your song. It makes things sound brighter, but again it can be overused - listen to Christina Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle" for an example of a song that, in my opinion, suffers from a little too much excitement. However, used sensibly an exciter can make your song breathe. Other tricks include stereo expanders, which make your mix sound "wider", more spacious and epic, DeEssers, which remove the nasty "tsssssss" sounds (called "sibilants") from vocals, and all kinds of reverbs and other effects. As with all mastering tricks, the trick is to be subtle rather than to turn everything up to eleven. In the case of sibilants on your vocal or low-frequency rumble on the bass guitar, you really need to sort that out in the mix rather than rely on the mastering engineer to fix it at a later stage - any effects applied during mastering apply to the entire song, so it's much better to sort these problems out during the recording/mixing stage. . Creating the master Depending on the studio and the pressing plant you're using, the engineer will then create a master on computer, on DAT tape or on CD ready to go to the pressing plant. There's some technical stuff involved here but it's not anything you need to worry about and it's beyond the scope of this article. Who should do it? Many pressing
plants offer mastering as part of their CD manufacturing deals, and companies
such as Hiltongrove (www.hiltongrove.com) include two hours' mastering
in their price. Bear in mind that two hours isn't long, so if your mixes
are all over the place then there's only so much that can be achieved
in such a short time. If you want more mastering time, you'll have to
pay for it - and it won't be cheap. Rates of £90 per hour aren't
unusual. And finally As you can see, mastering isn't quite the black art many musicians believe it to be. If you're spending money on professional recording and/or manufacturing, it's definitely worth getting your music mastered; the difference can be extraordinary. Just remember that it's part of a bigger process: mastering should be about subtle improvements rather than a last-minute rescue attempt. If your songs need significant surgery in the mastering suite, then there's something very wrong with them in the first place. © 2001 Gary Marshall. All rights reserved. |