Mastering is the final stage of audio production and involves putting the finishing touches on the final mix of a song by enhancing the overall sound, creating consistency across the album, and preparing it for distribution. (Izotope)
This involves a number of processes and techniques but a way of thinking about it is: If the mixing stage is mixing the individual tracks to make the song, then mastering is treating the song as a single track and working on it in context of the album. An example is if one song on the album had a very prominent bass while the rest were all quite similar, then you would adjust the bass through the use of equalisation in order for it to fit more in the context of the other tracks.
Mastering is also used in increasing the volume of your track so that it will work on streaming platforms. In general you should look for your track to be around -14 LUFS with -1dBTP. A useful tool to check if your master is optimal for streaming platforms is https://www.loudnesspenalty.com. This website will tell you how streaming platforms will change your track in order for it to reach their desired volume. I talked in my previous blog about the loudness wars and the negative impacts that can come through increasing the volume of a track but finding a mix between too quiet and too flat in dynamic range is an art in itself.
Mastering is becoming easier than ever to do at home through the wider accessibility of the tools required but also with the introduction of AI. There are now services online where you can submit a track and artificial intelligence will automatically master it and return it to you. Currently, it is quite easy to tell the difference between a human mastered and AI mastered track as the technology is relatively new and not entirely effective but over time through machine learning there is a worry that there will no longer be a need for a mastering engineer in the creation of music. While I don’t believe this to be true as AI will never be able to know exactly what the creator of the tracks vision is, it is definitely a concern for mastering engineers as it is now cheaper and quicker for artists to master their tracks with AI.
“AI-powered mastering systems allow endless tweaking (mastering engineers generally offer a specific number of revisions). They return results within a minute (mastering engineers might need up to a week). They are comparatively cheap (mastering engineers might charge anywhere from $30 up to a few hundred bucks a track, depending on their experience).” (Anderson, 2024)
The technology is widely used among ‘bedroom producers’ and anyone producing a track on a budget. It is easily accessible and is even being implemented into DAWs such as Logic Pro in the form of ‘mastering assistant’. It will analyse your track for you and create a mastering chain that you can then adjust. Here is a demonstration of how to use it.
Learning the basics of mastering is incredibly useful and I will be attempting to master all of my music from now on. The first track that I will be attempting to master is the group track for this module and I plan to spend quite a lot of time experimenting with mastering techniques such as dynamic equalisation and frequency selective compression. Projects I have made in the past have always suffered from very jarring shifts between songs and through mastering I can mitigate this and am excited to do so.
Anderson, N. (2024) AI can now master your music-and it does shockingly well, Ars Technica. Available at: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/02/mastering-music-is-hard-can-one-click-ai-make-it-easy/ (Accessed: 23 April 2024).
Izotope (no date) What is mastering?, What Is Mastering? Available at: https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/what-is-mastering.html (Accessed: 23 April 2024).