Mastering for an obscure genre?

[Sycross]

Hey,

My name's Ray Li, and this is my first post on the forum. I am planning on self-manufacturing a small run of my first album very soon, but I've really been having a hard time trying to self-master all of my songs.

The problem is... all the tips I can find for mastering are usually for traditional, established genres such as Rock, Hip Hop, etc... And my music... doesn't exactly fit into those categories. I write mostly synthesized orchestral tracks, but my music is far from classical.

I don't want to sound pompous or anything like "I'm so unique...", but I really would like to have some good-sounding songs for my first album and I have no idea if I am even on the right track with what I've done so far.

I'd really like some honest feedback, but please don't be too harsh if this absolutely sucks . I've pretty much sacrificed the last five weeks of my life working on this album.

One of my songs "Edge" : drop.io sycross101

[richiebee]

If you're going for mass replication (100+ units), do yourself a favour and get it mastered by someone who knows what they're doing. There's nothing worse than making 100+ coasters (and trying to sell them).

When you said "synthesized orchestral tracks", I was really thinking of orchestral tracks that have been arranged for synthesizer (one of my music tech profs did one of these in the 80's!). Your stuff can really be treated in the same way as much orchestral music for films these days - orchestra with modern bits added.

Personally, I don't think its ready for mastering. In particular listen to the ending... its just not smooth at all. Sounding pretty good, and compositionally its very strong, but I think you still have a little work to do.

[Sycross]

Thanks for the feedback. Do you have any suggestions as to how I can improve on the song? Would writing a new ending fix the issue or are there more underlying problems?

Originally Posted by richiebee

Your stuff can really be treated in the same way as much orchestral music for films these days - orchestra with modern bits added.

In regards to this tip, how is orchestral music for films treated these days? I've read that for classical orchestral pieces, the ME should try and do as little as possible to the recording. Would this hold true for my type of music?

[richiebee]

You're too attached to it right now. If you have immersed yourself in it for five weeks, you need to step away from it. For a week at least, maybe longer. Come back to it with fresh ears and listen for things you didn't notice before. Better still, get others to listen to your work and allow them to be as openly critical as possible. People don't like this. Its in our nature to like people to say good things about stuff that we've done. But it helps us to grow as individuals when we allow people to give a totally honest opinion. One of the great things about choosing an impartial mastering engineer is getting a totally unbiased set of ears on your work.

The issues I hear are programming and mixing, not composition. I think a lot of the programming is great (by the way, did you change that ending already?).

In the classical world, we try to keep things as pure as possible. We don't suck the life out of dynamics, and don't EQ the shit out everything. Mostly we don't need to. Classical ensembles naturally fit - they're designed to perform live without amplification, so the group has to balance and blend all on its own. When recording the same group, we aim for the same. A natural balance and blend. Your work doesn't fit this genre - mostly because you have those drums going through it. That's what takes away the classical and adds the modern film score element. At least for me. What does this mean for you? Well, it means you have a free license to do whatever you want with it. You're not governed by the restrictive rules of classical recordings. Even if it were totally classical, you're using samples, which mean that the rules of classical recordings don't apply.

But what are those rules anyway? I've just sent my third classical album for mastering. An initial setting came back, and its pretty heavily compressed. But it still sounds wonderfully natural. It consisted of five tracks (some as long as 15 minutes) recorded with different ensembles over a period of 3 years. Normally, I wouldn't allow a project to go on this long, but with the instrumentation used, that didn't matter. The guy who's mastering it, knows what he's doing, and using MS encoding has really brought the original recordings to life, and balanced them all wonderfully. It sounds like it was all recorded in one session - the way it should sound. He's familiar with mastering in a classical genre, and really knows what he's doing. Its the first time I've used him to master, but it certainly won't be the last.

Oh, and if you think your genre is obscure, this last album was ALL percussion. It includes a piece called Whirley Gig... 12 percussionists with flexible 2 inch pipe! Oh and one timpani.

If you'd like an impartial set of ears to listen to your entire work, I'm sure there are a few people on this group who would be willing to give you pointers. You could post in Bash this Mix, or you can PM me and we can work something out. You would have to be prepared for total honesty though.

If you get hurt easily, you need to step back and think what's best for your music. Getting negative criticism can be hard to take at first, but then, as you start to see an improvement in your work, you'll see it differently. A necessity. Invigorating even!

I need to start work now, but if you want me to give you some pointers on your posted piece, let me know. The quality of the encoding (MP3) is not great here, so I would imagine the original is a nice bit better... you need people to hear your work at that better quality.

[matainais]

if you want a honest, fast criticism...
When the drums come in, they soung very weak compared to the beginning. Sounds like someone brought in a electronic drumkit with a tiny speaker to the stage. I think the track could seriously benefit from more attention to the drums. I like the idea very much, but you really need to tur those drums up. Make them pump. Make them big and heavy, really huge symphonic stuff. And those strings could do with a bit of a thinning. They would sound awesome if there would be more "air" in them, and a bit more space. Try adding a little reverb to them and play around with theyr panning. That could do miracles.
Anyway - a nice idea, keep it up!

[Sycross]

Thanks richiebee for the words of advice. I really do want to improve on the song in anyway I can, but I just need some direction.

And there is one problem... I've been using my sister's laptop to put this stuff together, and she's heading back to college in 5 days. None of my home computers have even a chance at being able to run the software that I'm using... I honestly don't know how much I can fix in that short amount of time.

My original plan was to just make a short run of my album and sell it to friends/family to earn myself a bit of cash, but now I'm not sure if I should first fully invest in the sound before doing this. Either way, I am on an EXTREMELY limited budget. I'm just a high school student, and I've already used most of what I have on VSTs and the like.

Originally Posted by richiebee

The issues I hear are programming and mixing, not composition. I think a lot of the programming is great (by the way, did you change that ending already?).

I definitely need some advice on this. And yea, I tried experimenting with the ending and just uploaded another version of the song to ask some friends what they thought.

I've sent you a PM.

[Sycross]

And to matainais, thanks also for the advice. Especially for the drums, I wasn't sure exactly how to make them mix in with the orchestra. Right now, I've panned them in the center, but perhaps I should spread them out a bit?

[whomper]

Originally Posted by Sycross

And to matainais, thanks also for the advice. Especially for the drums, I wasn't sure exactly how to make them mix in with the orchestra. Right now, I've panned them in the center, but perhaps I should spread them out a bit?

why?

are they spread out in an orchestra performance?

does spreading them out help anything else to sound better?

wouldn't you want an orchestra to sound like an orchestra
or is this some orchestra sub-genre that sounds liek a mix of metal and pop bands ?

i would put them left of center in the back like seen on tv

[garww]

Take a break and forget about the computer. Go water skiing or something this weekend. You should be able to do your stuff on the home computer if you think the process through. Like converting the vst processing to wav on tracks you are not working on, etc..

[richiebee]

Originally Posted by whomper

i would put them left of center in the back like seen on tv

Why? So you can make room for the dialog track in the centre channel?