The Importance of Mastering:A Musician's Perspective by Lee Totten back to Info

As a musician, I'll be the first to admit that the mastering process has often confounded me. I mean, once the mixes are done, isn't the record pretty much completed? What does the mastering engineer really do and does it matter? And why is it that record companies pay several thousand dollars for mastering when the replicator I'm using advertisers to do it for $50 a song

Having recently competed my second major project, I now know that although mastering is one of the last things you do, it often makes the first impression. Mastering is much like the finishing work of building a house - your foundation can be sturdy and the walls solid, but if the wood trim is chipped and the paint job splotchy, people will perceive the whole house as ramshackle and shoddy.

I had a lot riding on my most recent recordings and I knew that good mastering would be crucial to the success of the project. My first independent release garnered a lot of attention from both radio and record companies, and the new release would be a way to show the full extent of what I was capable of as an artist. Additionally, we already had radio stations interested in playing the new material. Simply put, it was essential that my CD sound as professional as possible. Mastering would allow us to obtain that goal, as well as giving us the unbiased opinion of an experienced professional to ensure that we stay focused on the task at hand.

A good mastering engineer's job starts with listening to each mixed song individually and making adjustments.First the introductions and outros are addressed - count offs are removed, incidental noises cleaned up, and the fades at the end of a song are made to sound more natural. Next, musical edits can be performed on each track - sound pops or slight distortions can be fixed and slight level drops in your mix can be boosted to make the song consistent. Additionally, different sections of the song can be replaced by improved mixes. On one track of my record, the background vocals in the third chorus were not as strong as the first two, so we simply copied the first chorus and moved it into place where the third would be and created a stronger song. On another track, we had a great mix of the song but the guitar solo level a little too low. We had also mixed an edit piece - just the guitar solo - with the guitar a little louder. Once we were in the mastering studio, we simply inserted the louder guitar edit into the better overall mix to create a seamless track. Once the edits are done, each track is individually EQ'd and compressed to not only make it sound consistent with every other track on your CD, but also to make it sound good on the radio. Radio, as a rule, uses an obscene amount of compression when it broadcasts. That's why every song comes across your car radio at the same volume, whether it's Metallica or Mandy Patinkin. If your mastering engineer doesn't have a lot of experience in mastering for radio, there's a good chance that your record will sound pale, thin and muddy when it's played on the air. Finally, each track's level is adjusted relative to the other tracks, thus giving your CD a consistent and finished feel. Hidden tracks can be inserted, interesting crossfades can be performed where one song blends into another, and the songs are arranged in the finished order. Most mastering engineers can also provide you with a CD-R of your record to take home and live with for a few days, just to make sure that you're happy with the entire project. Once you've come to realize that mastering is an essential part of the recording process - as essential as buying tape to record on - the biggest challenge is determining where to master.

It's important to remember that, much like recording, everyone who says they can do it may be telling the truth, but the quality of the finished product varies widely. Generally speaking, in mastering you get what you pay for. Why do some major labels pay several thousand dollars? Because when you've spent several hundred thousand on recording and mixing, you don't want to take any chances. Can someone really master for $50 an hour? Yes, just like your friend with the cassette four-track and the microphones from Radio Shack can record your album for $10 an hour while the 16 or 24 track studio with an experienced engineer and professional gear wants five times that amount. Granted, great mastering will not always make a bad recording sound better, but bad mastering will certainly make a great recording sound sub-standard.

I clearly could not afford several thousand dollars for mastering. Yet I knew that the people I would be submitting my material to - the A&R executives and the radio station programmers - were accustomed to hearing professionally mastered records. One music director for a major-market radio station even told me point blank that the reason he was reluctant to play most independent releases was specifically because those artists tried to cut corners when it came to mastering and as a result their material sounded particularly bad on the air. So despite working on a tight budget, I realized that I could not afford NOT to have it mastered professionally - anything else would have been essentially throwing away all of the hard work that had gone into the writing, recording and mixing.

For me the ideal answer was to master at Northeastern Digital in Studio B with Laurie Flannery. Although it would cost me more than if I had the replicator master, it was still a small percentage of what the major labels paid for mastering and well within my budget. Additionally I knew that NDR and Laurie not only had top-notch equipment, but also a track record of working on both major label and independent releases. Northeastern Digital has been mastering professionally for 15 years and done over 3500 projects, including work for artists such as David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Arlo Guthrie, The Beach Boys and Joan Jett. I was also encouraged to know that Laurie herself had worked with The Nields, Louise Taylor, Morphine, Percy Hill, Rubyhorse, The Either Orchestra and Galaxy 500, since in mastering you're paying as much for the experience of the engineer as the mastering itself. After comparing her work on those albums with the recordings that I admired, I was genuinely enthusiastic about the job she would do on my record.

The day of the mastering session I brought in some CDs of my favorite artists - CDs whose sound I liked and whose material was similar to mine. Before we began mastering, Laurie took the time to find out what I was looking to get out of the project and what I had hoped to achieve musically. Then we discussed what the overall feel of the record should be.

Once the mastering began, I was presented with a series of options as we worked on the songs. Many times Laurie would play two versions of the same section, allowing me to hear the difference she was making in the tracks. By working directly in person with the mastering engineer I was able to provide more input into the final sound of the record. And when I wasn't sure of which direction to go in, Laurie was willing to give me honest answers based on her experiences - telling me which artists had taken which approaches and why.

Working with Laurie at NDR helped me to feel like an active participant in the mastering process, not just at the mercy of someone at the replication plant that I wouldn't even meet. At the same time, Laurie was able to apply her years of experiences as a mastering engineer to my project, all within the context of my specific goals and individual preferences