Mastering music it is a science, a skill and a art. It is one of the few disciplines where you
will have to:
- · Educate yourself.
- · Practice.
- · Develop skills
- · Learn Music Theory.
And still it is not enough many times, because you have to
spend in equipment, book, software, and
at the end music like any form of art is subjective.
As I am learning from
scratch, from my own experience I have found a lot of misconceptions, that had
lead me to waste a lot of time, and money trying to find that vst tool, or that
magic piece of equipment that will make my music sound professional.
I’ve follow historic threads about digital vs analog, what monitor speakers to use, what is the
best daw, can you use headphones to record audio, is thre a magic filter or
effect that professional uses? What is the best synthetizer. You can expend so much time trying to address these and more questions and it is a lot simpler than what you think
The best advices I’ve seen all over the net at the
end focuses on a few fundamental principles you have to follow in order to be
successful when post producing and mastering audio, it’s around not expend
money, but about, knowing your tools, and using your best judgement as to what
workflow, processes and settings you are to use.
GAS. Gear Adquisition Syndrome. There is new hardware better than old hardware everyday, but only buy what you really need and stick to it. famous production studio only have the tools for the engineers to work. All you need is to know your tools.
LIM. Less is more. If you think you need to add more sounds because a session does not sound correct, many times the through is not that you need to add more instruments, and grow your music project vertically. In must cases you have no chosen the best sounds, or you need to
The best monitor speaker. For someone in a budget the best monitoring speakers are the speakers you like. A pair speakers you know well, can pretty much help you, see imperfections.
The rule number one. There is no predefined rules to accomplish a task within a project in music production. Your guide will always be your ears, and always use your tools towards the goal of making the items you are working with, sound right.
You can't mix with headphones. this is pure myth. Headphones have better dynanic response than speakers, and can be used to make minor adjustments, or for fixing issues with equalization. But my recommendation, is to try your mixes on as many speakers as you can, so you can achieve a good sounding track, on many different environments.
The tools, the engineer uses, weather al free or expensive, are ways to get your recording to sound good. Many times the expensive equipment, or software help you get there easier. Other times, the free tools can work. In a professional environment it is very expensive to spend time unnecessarily troubleshooting glitches, learning, or because of the acoustic limitations in your room. Two important pieces of advice you want to take with you is:
- Know first the tools you already have really well. So you can efficiently know whithin your capabilities what to do, and when to do it.
- Do whatever you it takes to get your track to sound right to your ears. If you have a decent monitor, or headphones, you should
