Separation Mastering?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mattierocks
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SouthSIDE Glen said:
10 mix revisions would not be required if they took it to a mix engineer.
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I totally agree as well, an experienced set of ears mixed with a solid recording / mixing / mastering environment can trump inexperienced DIY almost every time.... but... people tend to want to spend the least amount of money possible and some people are control freaks by nature .

If money is going to be spent on a project and a professional outcome is expected, I see that if it's a live band, drum tracking is one area that is feasibly most beneficial, followed by mixing and then mastering.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Something I've been curious about for a long time, is why you *real* mastering guys (e.g. John, his brother Tom, and his other brother Tom ;)) have selected mastering as your specialty? Not that there's anything wrong with that, but we sure could use guys like you earlier in the process.
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For me, I come from a tracking / mixing background...and used to love doing that work and still do,.. although "very little" these days.

I still remember the first time I heard my mixes coming back from a pro mastering engineer for a major label album that I did and thinking..ya, that's exactly how I wanted my mixes to sound..how the hell did they do that?

I had always tried to achieve the "finished" album sound in my mixes without realizing how important the final step of mastering was.

I had always dabbled in the area of mastering and continued for years after that to set about learning... and still am.

I saw the signs a long time ago of my long time clients starting to buy their own daws and recording their own albums at home, ... but then bringing it back to me to "finish up"

About 5-6 years ago, I just made a decision to go all the way into mastering. Also realizing I was not getting any younger (now 47) and having a nuclear family and a mortgage to take care of, the long days and sometimes the decadence that goes along with that was starting to get the better of me. Anyways, I'm hoping to get through a couple more decades, cause there's no way I can handle a real job.
 
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With regard to why I moved into mastering I'll try to make a long story short.

I had originally started out as a musician in the 70's recording my own stuff and going to local studios as well as doing some live sound. I was always more interested in the sounds of things over practicing scales though. Whenever I would start doing my guitar lesson for the week I would practice in earnest for about 10-15 minutes and always be distracted by the sound of the amp, some pedal, or what it would sound like if I used a magnet instead of a pick, banging on the strings with a pair of scissors, etc.

At some point I came to the realization that I was more interested in manipulating audio rather than actually creating music (though I still like to crank up the amp occasionally). At about this this point a friend of mine and I started a recording/mixing studio, mastering was done in either New York or locally in Philly. We eventually got a gig mixing live concerts for King Biscuit along with putting together a national radio show. If interested here's some from the Kansas album we did (Steve Morse on guitar!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHhIV8PYouo&feature=youtube_gdata

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOyj1ndyC_I&NR=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrW6bs2VFyI&feature=youtube_gdata

Anyway the demands of the radio show got to the point where we couldn't keep sending everything to NY for mastering and they asked if I could do it. After a while they decided that they liked my mastering work enough to ask me to master the the concert CDs as well.

To be honest I started getting burned out with the recording process after a few years and dealing with band/manager/producer personalities. Mastering is exactly where I should be, fucking around with audio and banging on it with a pair of scissors.
 
Coming from Cleveland/Akron, I remember the "King Biscuit Flower Hour" very well on WMMS.

Now all we need is brother John?
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Something I've been curious about for a long time, is why you *real* mastering guys (e.g. John, his brother Tom, and his other brother Tom ;)) have selected mastering as your specialty? Not that there's anything wrong with that, but we sure could use guys like you earlier in the process.
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I was dragged into it kicking and screaming, then found out that I actually enjoyed it over time.
 
Waltz Mastering said:
Looking at some of the eq curves they were using was a bit of an eye opener into what some of the home recordists sometimes resort to. In both cases the songs and recordings were done very well...the mixing just needed a little touch up and tweeks that did make a world of difference.
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What did the EQ curves look like? What tweeks did you do and why did they make such a world of difference?
 
NYMorningstar said:
What did the EQ curves look like? What tweeks did you do and why did they make such a world of difference?
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On one project. I had found out that he was using eq "presets".

For example on bass there was a 10 dB boost at 60 Hz that was bloating the low end.

Panning for doubled BV were straight up the middle that when switched to hard L and R was much fuller.

Snare, kick and bass level adjustments

Using really l o n g reverbs...

..and mainly the non use of any vocal compression, which when added made the lead vocals sit in the track much better.

On the other project it was a case of running levels "to hot" at the mix stage and a bloated low end as well... just not having balance and clarity.

These are a few of the things.

I think it came down to them not being able to fully hear what was going on with their book shelf speakers that they were using in their room and a little inexperience on their part.
 
Waltz Mastering said:
On one project...
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So it actually made the final mastering process more productive to have the original tracks, interesting. A little inexperience and poor monitors and rooms is a recipe for disaster for sure.

It's a pretty complex processing structure from start to finish to get that great source onto a great sounding track and processed to a great sounding mix to be mastered to a great sounding finished product.

I wish the functions of recording, mixing and mastering weren't so obscure. Those in and of themselves are confusing. Are their separate industry job descriptions for each?

It seems like both the tracking eingineers, the mixing engineers and the mastering engineers find it acceptable to cross the invisible lines whenever it seems advantageous. Are the jobs obscurred by need (like needing to feed the family) or just lack of industry standard?

Alot of home recorders seem to think doing all of the above is ok. Some end up proving it. Could it be because they reach the mastering level of education which seems to include the need to know how to record and mix?
 
Wow, this is a great discussion! I knew that I had found something special when I saw "separates".

It seems that for the most part, what people are saying is that stems are fine and common, and separates less common but still fine. But, generally the better the mix, the more likely we can just do our job with a stereo master.

I've found that I recommend stems more often for do-it-yourself recording for home monitoring reasons and the fact that when dealing with hobbyist recording, people often are covering weaknesses. Example- they may want to hide a timid vocal or think the drums play better than the guitar solo. Since they are mixing on their own, they may not have the techniques to blend things together to glue the sound as opposed to hiding errors.

The other thing being the singles- where vocal up/back, comp mixes, and other variables mean someone needs to be holding on to the stems, not just for mastering one single or album, but in order to return to the mix for later changes.

Having options becomes crucial with independents and hobby recordists as well when the 'client' ends up being more than one person in the group (more me-mastering) or they 'thought' the mix was done. Sometimes it is easier to get a mix For the client than to finish off a mix From the client.

If the mix is good enough, I usually like getting comparison tracks from them so I'm hearing what they like in my room.
 
NYMorningstar said:
I wish the functions of recording, mixing and mastering weren't so obscure. Those in and of themselves are confusing. Are their separate industry job descriptions for each?
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I think it's impossible to get that specific, because every engineer/producer has their own way of doing many specific things. One can generally say that there are three main phases; tracking, mixing and mastering, and it's pretty easy to tell in which phase a project is in at any given time. But different folks have different workflows and preferences when it comes to some specific tasks as to whether they do them during this phase or that one.

For example, one producer/engineer team I know that are very good tend to do what I call a lot more "mixing during tracking" than I would ever do. That is, a lot of the things I would save for after all the tracking is finished these guys will go ahead and get over with between takes before all the tracking is done.

One way is not intrinsically better than the other, it's really just a matter of personal preference. These guys like to build the production more piece-by-piece as they go along, blurring the lines between the two phases slightly (though nowhere near completely), whereas for my thought processes and workflow preferences it works better for me to attack the whole mix as a single raw entity to mix after the tracking is complete. Some people say potato, other say chihuahua ;).

G.
 
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