Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Elements In A Mix And Mastering Service

By Stacey Massey


Mixing and mastering are two of the most essential components necessary for music production. Musicians who are working within their very own home studios, recording their own sounds often take care of these by themselves in order to create excellent tracks. Nonetheless, there are musicians preferring getting professional mix and mastering service as well.

To mix and master sounds are two very different things. People often make the mistake of interchanging one for the other or refer to the two terms with the same meaning. Mixing is the process by which producers put multiple audio layers together in order to make final tracks. It could also be a process by which existing tracks are musically modified.

When raw sounds are recorded straight from the condenser microphones, whether these are drums, piano or guitar, they would actually sound rather undynamic or flat. Producers usually first layer the tracks. They also change the volumes to get guitar sounds or drum beats to emerge at particular moments. Clicks or other extra noises may also be removed from clips. Such is the process of mixing.

Mastering, on the other hand, is different. It is the process where final tracks are optimized with the use of several different elements, which may range from stereo enhancement, equalization, or compression. Usually, this process will require not just technical skills from producers but also extensive knowledge on techniques and a good sense of hearing.

To master will simply means to bring tracks to life. The process will bring in spice to the recorded sounds. Producers may consider making drum beats sound much more dynamic or perhaps, have the guitars sound less sharp. Pianos may be toned down to sound soft and bass frequencies may also be increased. Effects may also be introduced into the tracks.

There are several elements involved in the process of mastering. One is compression. Although compression might be a common term, there are still a lot of people who may not be correctly using it. Compressing dynamic audios is something very common. What it does is prevent the audios from clipping. Compressing ensures that audios will not be exceeding decibel limits, thus preventing audios to come too loud.

Equalization is the procedure that involves boosting of sound frequencies. This element can be easy to understand. Usually, producers do not want the recorded tracks to come with thin bass drums. What they do then is have the bass frequencies increased through equalization. EQ makes it possible for sound engineers to achieve perfect instrumental sounds.

Other than compression and equalization, there are several more effects that producers add in to sounds in order to spice up the tracks. These effects allow them to make the most out of recorded sounds. Two of the most commonly applied effects are stereo enhancement and reverb.

A mix and mastering service mainly centers on instrumentation, notation and composition of subjects for music production. Just like in notating and composing, it requires experience as well as knowledge. Although tracks might already come sounding great after they were recorded, there can actually still be many more improvements to add on so they will sound the best they can.




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