Idea.. post a song.. we master it.. listen to each others work.. trade advice

[millett513]

I think it would be awesome to be able to master/attempt to master a song, and then hear how the same song turned out when other people mastered it. That way we could hear who is doing a good job, find out more about how well we master, and seek advice! What do you think? It would be easy, just post a song on a thread that is in need of mastering. Everyone can download it, and then post their results on the thread when they are done mastering.

[MattGras]

Yea, i like this idea too. I definately hope brandon trys this. It would be awesome if the person also put up the raw protools or logic files, so everyone could try mixing it their own way.

[millett513]

yea that would be really cool to be able to mix it

[Riggs77]

I have always wanted to see the difference that a person could make with one of my tunes and see how they would do things differently from me. Heck of an idea ya go goin there.

[sparqee]

You folks should put up some wav files and see who will have a go. This forum does not allow the posting of wav files but there are plenty of free file hosting sites around.

If you're not feeling too confident about your mixes then you might also consider posting stems. If you're not familiar with the concept of mix stems read this article: Stem mixing and mastering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[superpete]

Yeh post some tracks and see how many people are interested

[jclampitt]

sounds like the same idea as this Mixing and Mastering Idea

[superpete]

indeed it does seem like that idea. .- its a good idea/. lets get it started. i would love to upload some tracks but i dont have the equiptment yet .

anybody wanna uploads some tracks?

[brandondrury]

I'm not too big on the idea of a mastering trading. The reason for this is because I come from the school that mastering is not really all that creative of a process. I believe that mastering is that ditch digging process you have to go through when your creative vision is 100% totally realized. (This is more of an old school view of mastering.)

I think that removing noise in between songs, deciding on the amount of space in between songs, and burning the final version with a $80,000 "laser etcher" (as Eric Conn called it) is the type of thing that you take care of during the mastering process. You also add a dB of EQ here and a dB of EQ there to help give each song a common tonal vibe and make sure the songs are all the same basic level, but again, this is a fairly objective process.

Mostly, mastering is about letting another guy (a robo pro who listens to a new album each and every day) with another set of ears on a mega monitoring system give your mixes a listen. If you can get the mastering engineer to accept your mix, you've won! The real value of a mastering engineer is when they tell you to remix!

I don't believe there is much benefit to mastering a single song. Some don't agree. I've already done the best I possible could on a single mix. For all practical purposes (and assuming I'm mastering it myself) a single song should not need any mastering accept for maybe a bit more limiting to increase the volume....MAYBE. If I know I'm "mastering" the song myself, I'll go ahead and fully limit the song during the mixing process too.

While a mega mega pro who masters a new album each day has a specific perspective about what is required in the mix, I certainly don't have this perspective and no other non-mastering dude does either. Since I believe that this is 90% of the purpose of going with a robo mastering dude, the idea of leaving it to a non-mastering guy like myself seems pointless.

I know what's going to happen here. Guys are going to go nuts with their "mastering software" tweaking it all to hell in an effort to "improve" the mix as much as possible. I'd be very leary of over-EQ, over-compression, over-compression, and over-3D effect thingy, etc. I'm of the opinion that all these mastering gadgets make the mix worse 90% of the time if in the wrong hands.

Lastly, because I'm not a mastering guy, I come from the school that a mastering guy has extremely little control over a mix simply because he's working on just stereo files (not counting stems). Anytime I encountered a problem that could not be solved with 2dB of EQ I would demand a remix (just like the real guys do). In fact, if we are talking about just a single song, the only thing I'd want to hear from another non-mastering guy is "Pass" or "Fail". "Yes" or "No" and the reasons for "No".

I Don't Mean To Be An Asshole
I don't mean to be too critical here. I definitely appreciate any suggests and feedback. However, this over dependency on mastering is an enormous problem in my opinion. My skills as a mixing dude have grown exponentially since I've accepted the fact that I work without a safety net. No one is going to be save my ass. If I don't get a mix within 99% of where it's supposed to be, the results from even pro mastering are going to be horrible (if they are the kind of asshole that doesn't demand a remix). I know. I've done it.

Alternatives
The alternative is a mixing contest / trade off. This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. The problem is a typical 3 minute song will use up close to 1GB of bandwidth. I have big plans for this in early 2009. I just have to figure out how I'm going to pull it off.

Brandon

[johnn]

I'm glad I checked out this thread. The few studio engineering pros I've met kept all this a mystery. They usually just brought in musicians who would give them something they could use. Then they could do their "magic".