Mastering a song that runs into the next

I'm trying to understand this in the simplest way possible from a non-musician point of view.

So far I see "Generally you master an entire album as one thing" a then "Tracks are nearly always mastered independently."

Glad we all agree!

I have mixed intros and outros for commercial radio for years, so this is how I would do it in my non-musician way.

Let's assume you have three audio files, all sounding as you want them to: 2 songs and the wind.

I am reminded of the old Moody Blues "Days Of The Future Past".where they combined cuts of the London Festival Orchestra with the band.

Do your songs fade in/out or stop abruptly?

If song 1 fades out,I would just piece song 1 and 2 together on one track and the wind on another track.then play around with the spacing between the songs and the placement of the wind (and volume) until it sounds right. If song 1 stops abruptly, you may still able to make it work.

I agree that you should also make separate song versions with fades for possible airplay.

Good luck!
 
I'm trying to understand this in the simplest way possible from a non-musician point of view.

So far I see "Generally you master an entire album as one thing" a then "Tracks are nearly always mastered independently."

I would do it all in one project and export one audio file for CD replication, but inside the project would have the various imported song files.

Here's an actual CD mastering project I recently did (no overlapping audio, but no reason there couldn't have been):

Mastering Session.jpg

This was delivered as a CD-R burned disc-at-once (rather than track-at-a-time) to ensure the exact timing and marker placement.
 
Also... ya'll are aware that Automation exists and the Mastering Engineer most likely knows how to use Automation right? Unless your song is a "Single" then all of your tracks are Mastered in the same Project.
 
Well, there's part of the rub. We don't know what's going to be a single or not. That's why each individual tune is delivered independently along with an assembled master file. It's still part of the same project.
 
Well, there's part of the rub. We don't know what's going to be a single or not. That's why each individual tune is delivered independently along with an assembled master file. It's still part of the same project.

When I was referring to a "Single", I meant a single song... i.e. a song that isn't part of an Album. Lots of releases these days are single songs only. I didn't mean a song off the album that you'd release later/before as a "Single" if that makes sense. In other words... if you've just recorded one song and are planning on releasing it, that's what I was referring to. Otherwise all tracks should be sent to the ME at the same time.
 
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