Philosophy
Another pair of ears, another pair of hands.
My job isn't just to turn a demo into something that sounds finished. It's to get it as close as possible to the way it's always sounded in your mind.
Can you fix it?
Mastering isn't about fixing something broken. It's a final stage of audio processing that can make your music feel louder and more professional, but also thicker, or more delicate, or more spacious, or all of the above. In essence, it's just any chain of effects placed on the master channel. It's a final polish that is meant to enhance, not repair, your music. It's usually better to address issues in the recording and in the mix than it is to try and master over them. If this is the case, I'll come back to you with suggestions rather than bulldoze through.
What's the downside of making things louder?
I've always been told that you have to make a call between high volume and high clarity. I don't think that's entirely true, and it's something I've always refused to accept in my own music. It's not even a matter of striking the right balance. Even when we're pushing the extremes, we can make loud music that sounds good played quiet, and quiet music that sounds good played loud.
At least, be human?
Whether it's something that lives in the cloud or in your machine, AI mastering systems can EQ your track to make it closer to a predefined standard frequency balance and pump the volume with standardised compression. It pushes your song to an average. It's not the worst - but it has no sense of context, no sense of personality and no ears of its own. It's a one size fits all approach. A human engineer with an understanding of your sound, your influences and your goals can tailor the sound to your aesthetic, not force its own algorithmic aesthetic on you.
Shouldn't I learn to master my own music?
Kind of. Maybe. Over the years I've found that learning about mastering has made me better at mixing, learning about mixing has made me better at producing, and learning about producing has made me better at writing. If it's something that interests you, learning more about mixing and mastering is well worth your time. Becoming a better craftsman will help you become a better artist, and understanding how the mastering process will affect your mix is hugely helpful when you're making creative decisions. But, speaking from experience, it can take years to get your skills to the point where you're completely happy with the final result, and that probably doesn't fit into your release schedule.
If you are interested in better understanding what I've done, I'm more than happy to provide detailed notes and explain why I've made the decisions the way I have so you can apply them to your next track.
Show me yours?
If you've made your own master, please share it. A mixdown with your chain and a mixdown without it. If you've put work into a specific sound, but it's not quite there yet, I want to hear it so that my final version is built with your vision in mind. I'm here to build with you, not over you.