The importance of mastering your songs

By andy On December 11, 2012 · 21 Comments

As I’ve spoken about before, the most important thing for building a fan base for your music is making and releasing quality, professional songs. So today I want to talk about mastering, which is that final step to give your songs that finished feel.

I’m going to be honest and say that I don’t really know a whole lot about mastering, but from this post a few weeks ago you should know that mastering is one of the few things I’m actually willing to pay for when releasing new music. It’s important, and I don’t have a whole lot of experience doing it. So I pay for it.

Anyway. Mastering is important for a few reasons. It will make your tracks more cohesive. It evens out the volume levels over all your tracks. Subtle EQ and compression can really smooth out your mix.

But rather than explain it to you, I thought I’d just show you can example. I released my new EP called Passage a few weeks ago and I had it mastered by Matt Slaven. Here is an unmastered version of one of the songs called Roaring Forties.

And here is the mastered version.

I’d really recommend taking a few good listens to each in order to fully hear the subtle but wonderful things that mastering can do to your tracks. One of the first things you’ll notice is a loudness increase. It’s good to give your mastering engineer a mixed track that has some headroom (meaning, it’s not as loud as normal tracks) so that they have some room to play with EQs and compressors and such. But if you listen closely you should hear the increased clarity of individual parts that comes from subtle compression and EQ. Hopefully you’ll also notice an overall warmth to the track. This is due to the high quality analog gear that Matt ran all these songs through. I record and mix completely in my computer, so it’s nice to get a little analog warmth on the track at the end.

If you have any more questions about mastering, please feel free to email me! But I hope that just listening to these two tracks side by side can help you get a better feel for what mastering actually is. And if you’d like Matt’s contact info to master your tracks, email me for that as well! He does a great job for a great price and has some great gear. My email is andy@andyothling.com.

In the comments below, tell me some of the differences you noticed between the mastered and unmastered track?

Did you like this post?

Then please subscribe and receive my weekly music tips and other exclusive content. You will also get a FREE COPY of my Musician's Toolkit eBook. In this I reveal EVERYTHING that I use to record, produce, and promote my music. I would love to help you grow your fan base!

http://twitter.com/TristanJamesMN Tristan Hopperton

Listening to the unmastered track first, it was hard to imagine how things could get any clearer. The mix sounded very balanced, and each individual part seemed defined. Then listening to the mastered version, everything you talked about made perfect sense! Matt did a wonderful job bringing each individual part of this track to life and making them all stand out a little more, without it seeming like they were battling each-other. This is a great example!
- http://www.andyothling.com/ Andy Othling
  
  Absolutely! He really did a great job!
http://www.facebook.com/andrew.m.elmore Andrew Elmore

I wish I could nail down exactly what magic of analog equipment (and vinyl records, for that matter) creates what we call “warmth”, but I’m not worried about it. It its an audible, perceivable quality, not the cork-sniffing pixie dust placebo that is easy to get wrapped up in. Over all, the EQ and compression makes this track so much more tangible and personable. Especially in things like the soft piano near the end. Also, It might just be Soundcloud’s MP3 compression, but the bells seem like they’re clipping a bit, but I think that’s just SoundCloud because I didn’t feel that at all when I downloaded the actual EP. Anyway, yes, getting things mastered properly is so much more important than us independent musicians realize sometimes. I’ll sit at a computer and mix something for hours, and I’ll get to a point when I think that I can’t mix it any better (at least in my own flawed ability) but as soon as it’s mastered, everything is drastically improved in a way I couldn’t have foreen, and that’s the magic and importance of it.
Gawet

The difference is obvious at 1:46 ! great work !
http://www.facebook.com/rnrivas Rolando Rivas

Great information. Thanks for sharing. I released a CD a couple of years ago and found that mastering really took the production to the next level — especially if you don’t have high end recording equipment. Have a great tour — sorry to miss you all this year — really enjoyed the concert a couple of years ago when you made it to Dallas.
- http://www.andyothling.com/ Andy Othling
  
  Thanks Rolando!
John

What are you using to make those chimes sounds?
Anonymous

I’m noticing a lot more fullness in the beginning of the song in the mastered version. I didn’t notice any thinness in the unmastered version on first listen, but when comparing it to the mastered version, it’s clear how the latter fills the space in the recording much, much more effectively. In the unmastered version, you don’t really get that sense of fullness until the bass comes in near the end. There’s also definitely a better sense of balance between all the frequencies in the mastered track, an increase of clarity without any sacrifice of emphasis in the different sections of the song. The original recording sounded really good, but after mastering, it absolutely sounds smoother, clearer, sweeter, more professional.
- http://www.andyothling.com/ Andy Othling
  
  I totally agree!
yaya

great track,,mastered or unmaster but the guitar noise loope at the end mm maybe i slowly fade it in and leave only the ac guitar just a thought
Jeremy

What can someone expect to pay for mastering?
- http://twitter.com/ItsJoheeshua JoshGledhill
  
  In the UK, when I looked before I did it myself it was about £15-£45 per track
Daniel

I’m assuming you are giving your engineer an unmixed down project? So IF you were to give your song to an engineer you have to be using the same daw as him? But I see you mentioning analog machines. How does this process work? Thanks!
- http://twitter.com/ItsJoheeshua JoshGledhill
  
  No you send the whole track as a WAV once it’s been mixed by You/some else and he will then apply compressor, EQ, Stereo width, Limiting (maybe) and a couple other things if needed, he will send it back to you to listen too and if your not happy tell him and he will adjust it for free or maybe more payment depending on who it is. I think personally from my experience of only a few tracks mastering is easy if you do it more and more, I mean in the days of those big round discs called vinyls it was mega important you had it mastered by someone who knew what they were doing because there was only a small margin for error but now music is played in clubs, on headphones and even down telephones so what isn’t as important (I say that flexible) Hope that helps!!!
  - Daniel
    
    Thanks Josh. That was a great reply. Rather surprising, though. That a mastering is not done by individual track but as a whole. I feel like to make individual instruments sound like what they are supposed to just with one master track is an art itself! Dang. mad props to the masters
- http://www.andyothling.com/ Andy Othling
  
  Yes, as Josh said, you only send stereo WAV files to a mastering engineer. That’s all they need!
Brian Sheen

Andy, aside from the mastering making a clearly noticeable difference, I’d have to say what a great track! Fantastic job…
- http://www.andyothling.com/ Andy Othling
  
  Thanks Brian!
http://marcoraaphorst.nl/ Marco Raaphorst

I think that if you think things can sound better, just do it. The public doens’t care at all. Many songs are mastered shitty. Many hitsongs. Lots of stuff in the 80′s and 90′s sounded like shit. Almost mobody cared. The thing is: if you care, do something about it. But for mainstream, they simply don’t gare. They listen to autuned vocals which sound like shit and they want to buy it straight away. And that’s fine, sound quality has nothing to do with music. Maybe lofi sounding stuff is even more interesting because our brain starts to make up for those ‘lost’ things.

Your mastered track sounded less dynamic, more modern. I preferred the more dynamic version.
eli

WOW so cool. How much should I expect to be paying for mastering one song? A five song EP? Just a ballpark is fine…

Thanks btw this is great!
http://twitter.com/jonhom Jon Homrighausen

this is a very well SETUP’d master!