Mastering

People, what exactly is your idea of mastering? It's not the first time i hear ( now yeah... read ) users on this site use the word like it's some kind of magic mushroom, but do you know what mastering actually is? Mastering is the finishing touch, the last part of the production, and is only efficient if it's done on an entire album. Mastering a single track is in fact impossible. Mastering is meant to make and album sound as one entity, and to make sure all tracks are Red Book compliant ( for CD that is, in case of an LP it's different ).

What you mean isn't mastering, it's MIXING!

Anyway, i've listened to your track. There's a bass in there that's saturating ( and no, it's not my speaker :) ), so keep attention to that one ( at a certain point, you make it go louder and then back to it's "normal" position... you just got a bit to loud ). For the rest... all i can say is that i think your bleeps and things are to static. Make them move around a bit. Everything sounds a bit mono right now, which is quite a shame with those nice bleeps you've put in there! Pff... argl, anyway i'm not good at this ( i never knew how too explain things to people... sniff ). But that's my major comment: make those sounds move around! And use levels of depth by using reverb ( you can make a sound sound like it comes for farther away by putting reverb on it, but it's a delicate... euh... "equilibre/evenwicht" ). Right now your track sounds like you've put the sounds in there, and that's it. Try to use some effects and work a bit with those also to make everything go much more crazy.

Or just ignore everything i say... :)

Yes, people ofteh confuse mixing with mastering. Mixing is reworking a track, putting the little details and effects in the correct place (if you are good), and, basically, making it into a good song. Good basic songs might not get any attention due to bad mixing, so good mixing is always necessary.

Good mastering is a different and, IMHO, much more difficult job. You need to be able to take some distance of the work (so in my eyes, mastering is most often done the best by someone not mastering their own work). Mastering is also done on a finished product, e.g. a cd or vinyl (although between the two it's a huge difference).

Imagine a compilation cd and putting a glitchy clicks 'n' cuts song with a lot of mixing done and sounds going from left speaker to right speaker, next to a violent breakcore song where all basses are maxed out. A good mastering makes those two 'flow' from one into the other.

Of course, if you like all songs in itself, you could leave them and make a product with it, but then listeners might sometimes have to change volume between songs and hence, not a lot of people take you very seriously.

woow what a lesson guy's just a question about mixing: i use reason 2.5 a lot ( very original...) and i try to use soundforge for the mixin' , witch classics options you would use in soundforge to get the sound better??What is the dc offset?how to get a better stereo?some people says that reason miss some mid frequencies is it thrue? reason got a special sound (ina bad way i mean) and i always want to change it but i can t really... thx!!!

hey guys! thanks for the help! Yes idd i was talking about mixing, not mastering. I always get the feeling that the changes in volume or depth or bass or treble or whatever are too drastic and make the track loose some of its power,... probably because of my newbee mixing skills. I'll try to make a reasonable 'remix' of the 'jus de bruit' track and post a link here. Do comment. Thanks again!

I don't know Soundforge, so i don't know which "classic options" are possible. But for the DC Offset: it's the "0" of your sound signal. As you probably know, sound are in fact waves, that go through a zero point ( in the air this means: pressure - no mouvement - depressure - no mouvement - pressure -... and so on ). So the DC Offset is just the neutral point of your digital audio signal. Normally, you shouldn't change anything about it. As for the lack of mids in Reason... no idea :)

As for the mixing in general... There are some basic rules which can help you. First of all, you need a reference for your mix. There's no point in just putting some volumes if you don't have a reference. So choose something ( usually, for rock music, people pick the bass drum as the reference ) and take that as your starting point: put that track to a good level, and put the other ones open gradually in function of your reference. If your master exceeds 0dB, that's bad :) You should never saturate when you're working with digital workstations. Oh yeah, don't forget to pan your sounds! So once you've got your volumes more or less right, you can start working on each individual track. EQ sounds! Try avoiding to boost sounds with an EQ ( everyone does that of course, but first learn to EQ sounds by cutting of things ), but rather cut off what you don't... euh... need. There's a method for this that can help you at first: boost the frequencies a max, then slowly sweep through the entire spectrum. When you hear a frequency that you really dislike, you cut it down. How much you cut and which Q to use for your EQ depends from case to case, but practice makes skill! You should clean up every track this way, and give each track it's own place in the frequency spectrum. If a sounds tends to fall away and then suddenly comes back, you can try to compress it. Don't ask me how you should do that, cause i couldn't tell you ( just don't do it to violenty ;) ). Once again: practice makes skill. Once you've got a nice basic mix, you can start adding some effects. Effects should be the sugar on the cake, they shouldn't take the overhand! Of course, we're talking about electronics music, so things are a bit different :) Once you know how to mix a bit, you can start automating things ( no need for making things more complicated then they already are ). And once you know how to do that, you're ready for one hell of a ride :)

Mixing isn't easy. Take your time to learn things, experiment, try things out,... Listen to CD's and try to hear how tracks have been mixed ( the last Massive Attack is a real beauty when it comes to the mixing job, and the first A Perfect Circle disc is absolutely fabulousy produced! ). Anyway, I personally think that for electronic music, the mixing job is part of the creation process, so the better you get, the more idea's you'll be able to work out in your own music!

THANX A LOT ;)

phffffff,to much to read,just use a multi bands compressor(vst),cause reason 2.5 does not hold such tool(or make it yourself>1splitter,3 compressors,3equilizers=reason multi-bands compressor)

ya also can rewire it to cubase,to ajust all eventualy side-effects of the vst compressor

basicaly my strategy is to wait some time between producin the song and mastering it fully,so i wont get borred on it

also a lot is true ,about what they told ya before,so wont tell it again,remember >>iff the software that ya use, cant handle the thing ya want to do>>>go around it with something else

in flemisch>>>een omeweg zoeken

i hope its usefull to you,greeetz