Practical Mastering

[Cabbit]

Hi, like most of the people in this section, I"m new.

Here's what I would like advice on:

I want to produce a CD that sounds coherent... you know that sounds like an album, not a compilation. This doesn't have to be optimized for radio play (it will probably never get any) and I'm not looking for 'contempory proffesional quality' instead I'm just going for something that is almost as listenable as say... a good 80's Indie album (I'm thinking of stuff like Soul Asylum's recordings before they got big or the Dead Kennedy's "Frankenchrist" or Nirvana's "Bleach") I'm only producing this for me and a fairly small group of friends but I still want things to sound like they fit together.

Here's an elaboration on my situation:

This is my own band's material I'm working with. (it's rock/pop)

The basic tracks were recorded in a variaty of different sessions spaced out signifcantly in time. The material is not REALLY mixed yet, but the basic tracks have been recorded, and some of them are roughly mixed and for the most part, I can't undo what has already been done to them. (This is mostly a problem that effects only recordings of guitars... I was using an 8-track and had to 'bounce" tracks in order to fit everything on there)

The problem is, that while all the material I"ve got recorded so far is of a quality level I can live with, the different songs were recorded using different techniques and sound very different from each other. (for example: The drum mic-ing is not consistent, the manor in which vocals were recorded is not consistent, track doubling of guitars is not consistent, the method of recording bass was not consistent, and even the equipment used to record is not consistent, some of it was done on a somewhat old stand-alone Roland 8-track digital recorder and the rest was recorded via a home PC, mixer, and recording software)

I plan to take the stuff off of the roland and record track by track into my PC, since I have more flexibility to mix with my software (Audacity... you can check it out, it's open source ... http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ )

If I really want to I can re-record some vocals and guitars but I want to aviod this whenever possible. Unless I redo guitars, however, I don't have very much flexibility with EQ because they were already EQed when I bounced them together.

So I re-iterate:

I want to take all this heteorogenous material and make it sound like it more or less fits together. Does anyone have any advice?

More generally, could someone point me in the general direction of an FAQ or something on very BASIC mastering techniques ... I simply don't have the hardware capability to do anything more than this.

 

[iratecaller666]

Hey

A company called Izotope has realeased a gentle intro to mastering in PDF format.

Now the guide uses screenshots from their software, but the concepts can be applied with other equivalent mechanisms.

http://izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/guides.html

It's called the mastering with Ozone guide and it's very well written.

Once you've read though, in an hour or so, you'll have a better understanding of the process and can begin to formulate an approach.

Keeping in mind that it takes years to trully 'master' the craft. Frustration may invevitably set in, at which point you may want to querry the help of a real mastering engineer.

In the spirit of homerecording however, the guide will get you closer.

This following guide, really kicks butt. Read it.

http://www.tcelectronic.com/media/bobkatz.pdf

Also if you can get your hands on the PDF manual for the TC Electronincs Finalizer, you'll have an even better grasp on the concepts.

http://www.tcelectronic.com/Default.asp?Id=742

Tristan

 

[Chris Shaeffer]

Pick your best recording.

Use whatever you have to make the rest of your songs sound about the same in terms of loudness and freqeuncy.

When in doubt, be gentle.

Use whatever you have to but quick fades on the beginning (so it comes up from silence) and whatever length fades you want on the end.

Use whatever you have to burn a CD of your masters with a 2 second pause between each track- or whatever else you might want.

Have fun,
Chris