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How to Master a Music Track without the help of an Engineer?

· Mastering Services

Mastering could be simply defined as the procedure, where you need to prepare a collection of tracks for the commercial market. The aim of this process is to fabricate and present a comprehensible final product that renders exceptionally onto all sorts of listening systems and environments of the real world, beyond the moderately immaculate confines of studios. Although many musicians tend to indulge in this extensive procedure on their own, hiring a professional audio engineer stands to be viable. Owing to their adequate knowledge and experience, these experts could offer renewed perspectives and add the last magnificent touches to the recordings. However, appointing these professionals could be quite expensive. Thus, if an artist has a tight budget, he could easily master the song by unaided. But if they want to do it properly, they need to keep the below-mentioned tips at the back of their mind.

Tips to Master like a Pro

There are varied audio software that possess all the necessary tools. Apart from this best online mastering service, if a musician has patience and potentiality of critical listening, he could master his songs without any difficulty. Without further delay, let us take a good look at some of the essential tips to master a song in a home recording studio.

  • While audio mixing demands complete concentration on the elements of a single song, mastering chiefly involves listening to all the music tracks of an album. The first step that a musician needs to undertake is figuring out the order of the songs. Does an artist want to hook the hearer with a pop song and then move to slower tracks or he wants to do just the opposite? It is viable if he takes some time to observe how the songs flow in varied orders and then finally place them in the album.
  • Equalisation or EQ is the method of adjusting definite frequencies of a recorded track. A musician needs to understand that EQ could be divided into three categories:
  1. Lower frequencies or bass adds warmth to a song.
  2. Middle range frequencies or mids add highlights to the guitar, vocals and bass.
  3. Higher frequencies or highs adds brightness and vivacity to the song.

During this phase, a musician must not make any drastic change but just focus on boosting or reducing the levels, which would offer all the songs with the necessary clarity.

  • Through compression, an artist could reduce the volumes during the climaxes but enhance the overall sound of the album. Through this method, you control the punches in the songs. Limiters are also a type of compressor through which an artist could smooth out all the differences in volume without distorting the album. What a musician must remember is that too much of compression could lead song to lose its vibrancy.
  • Mastering is not only about correcting the sound, it also amends the gaps and spaces in an album. An artist needs to see how the tracks are spaced before the album is uploaded to an online distributor. For CDs, the ideal amount of space or gap is 2 seconds. If an artist wants fades, he needs to determine the exact points and lengths.

So, if you do not have enough money to hire an experienced audio engineer, follow the aforementioned points and perform professional music mastering on your own.