Mastering is a critical final step in your music making progress and one you don’t want to skip before releasing your music into the world.
But I think many home studio musicians have the wrong idea about mastering – thinking it’s where your music is truly transformed into radio ready gold. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Often confused with the mixing process, mastering should not be where you do the heavy lifting in making your song sound awesome. Instead it should be a straightforward process of finishing touches.
In this video I’m going to walk you through the 4 tools you need (and 1 critical trick) to making sure your masters sound balanced, punchy, and commercially viable.
The good news? You likely already have these tools in your DAW – and mastering should only take you about 10 minutes per song.
From Beginning To End
If you’ve been following what I’ve been doing the past few months then you should be very familiar with this song.
Starting with just a rough idea on my acoustic guitar I showed you the process of actually mapping out and recording this song from scratch using free software and only $350 worth of gear.
Then I gave you a step by step plan for mixing your music – and I walked you through this song from raw recording to final mix.
Which leads to today’s video – mastering.
Many of you have expressed interest in the song as it’s been progressing and I appreciate the kind words and encouraging comments. If you care to get your hands on the final version of this song you can download your copy from the iTunes and Google Play stores, or pretty much anywhere you listen to music!
Thanks in advance for the support!
Now get out there and release your OWN song using all that you’ve learned from these series of videos! I can’t wait to hear your success story.
Do Not Create Another Song Until You Read This Guide
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Discover the 6 Steps for Creating a Radio-Worthy Song From Scratch
My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
My philosophy for mastering is to preserve peaks when using a limiter. If I come across a song that sounds quieter than most other songs, then hey I’d prefer that song to be a lot better as I’m not listening to song that does not take away the peaks, especially when playing at loud volume.
But that is only my philosophy
But I do have a question: what if I cannot find songs that are similar to one of my songs that I posted in Soundcloud for referencing?
https://soundcloud.com/grayson-peddie
For all I know, if I don’t reference my song with other songs, I’d be doing the disservice, but for me, I like to have my song stand apart from other songs by not matching closely in terms of tone. And that would also be my philosophy as well.
Referencing is helpful to make sure you’re not being fooled by your speakers/room. So I would reference even if you are trying to “stand out”. As far as referencing something that sounds like your music, just look for tracks with similar instrumentation (guitars? synths? piano?)
Graham,
I’m a song writer who has struggled with DAW’s, relying on recording Engineers for years who – sadly – have made a bloody mess of larger (90 minutes) projects as well as single songs.
I’ve known that for me to achieve any advancement I would have to understand more about my DAW and the mix/mastering process but random articles just never gave me enough of a picture to pull it all together.
Your videos and the 6 step guide are not only an eye opening experience but the only reference I have ever seen that pulls it all together in a logical order. I can actually look back at early ‘finished’ songs of mine and identify what steps were omitted or simply not employed by audio engineers. (Hum).
I’m blown away by the detail that is required to mix and use my DAW properly. Also, a bit humbled to see how much I have failed my own works over the years.
I imagine, in time, this will become second nature but for now, I’ll stick to your steps and format to deliver a better product.
What a great, eye opening experience.
Having been a teacher for many years I respect the though and work you have put into this extensive tutorial and am greatly impressed by your direct, honest approach.
Thank You
Thanks Geoff
Graham, Thanks for this! I’ve been doing these Mastering steps in my home studio for two years now, but only sort of by the seat of my pants, not knowing if I was handling it correctly. Your video really reinforced my process and gave me more confidence that I’m covering the bases. Speaking of which, I learned two critical things from this video – one is HOW to use the Reference track; and the other is the idea of backing off the Wet side in Compression. Not sure why I hadn’t picked up on that previously, as I do it all the time with Reverb. But it’s absolutely key to keeping the compression at a reasonable level. Thanks again, and keep the great training/advice coming! P.S. I bought your Jumpstart series last week and am finding it quite useful.
Glad to hear it John!
Hi Graham, great video!
While watching the “How to mix a song from scratch” I was kind of wondering why you didn’t use a reference song as part of that tutorial. I know you have shown this in many of your videos. Maybe you were saving it to demonstrate as you did here? My question is, in your workflow do you typically reference another song only during your mastering phase, or do you do this when mixing as well? I can see this being useful in BOTH stages. I myself have taken your advice and have been using reference tracks in my mixes, but I’ve been unsure of trying to master myself. Now that you’ve taken the mystery out of it, I feel more confident in trying this on my next mix! Thanks again for this!
Great question Billy. I left it out mostly to show here in the Mastering video. I reference all the way back in the recording phase, through mixing and mastering. Always referencing.
Interesting way to do mastering Graham. Never thought of using a VU meter calibrated to -10 to increase volume. Thanks for sharing that tip. I would normally play it by ear when using a reference track but this method is an easier way to get the same result.
Dear Graham,
Thank you for this great “How To”. Learned a lot and it´s best as possible. Not only about mastering, also recording, mixing and so on. Yours Gerd.
Nice job on the series Graham. Very thorough and provides some excellent insight. It’s an awesome song with a great sound but it had to start one track at a time and with a great recording. Get it right in the beginning, as you did here, provides for not only an easy mix, but a very clean and polished master.
PS – Are you one of Joe’s crickets? LOL
Thanks Nick!
Joe’s crickets?
Listen to Joe’s EP’s… he’d appreciate it.. 🙂
Crickets is what he heard based on a recent blog. I’m sure he can fill you in the details.
Thanks for being a honest person in your videos.you should make PayPal one of the way to pay for your stuff because I will never use a credit card again
Awesome! Great video. That take the mystery of how loud the mastered mix should be. Thank you so much.
I like your song, much better the moron5 track.
Having been mastering for 20+ years I would like to leave these tips.
The first thing is give yourself a break for a few days, do not listen to your song.
When you do your master mix, it should be around – 6-8, this will give you some head room.
Now I use a mastering program called T-Racks, which I think is the king of mastering programs.
The thing to make note of, is when mastering to CD is you cannot have overs, that is over -0. And must be at 16 bit
T-Racks has many tools to make a great mix. I like to use basically 3 devices.
The classic EQ, Classic compressor, the classic militia band limiter. or the vintage 670 (Fairchild) compressor. And in that order, and with stunning results. You can’t miss making a great master with T-Racks.
As for referencing this my take, I guess what I’m trying to say, listen to other people’s stuff but try to develop your own sound as far mixing goes. and don’t be afraid to sound different than everyone else, as far as how your recording sound “Be an in-aviator not an imitator”.
That was the greatest thing I loved about the Beatles was each LP sounded different than the last and could not be compared to anyone else’s stuff.
And be vary, very careful of as Quincy Jones put it.” Perlis from analyst” or as Clint Eastwood said “Killing it with improvements” and last but not least “Fell vs. Perfection”
Geoff Emerick
Avoid the Christmas tree effect of having a compressor, EQ, reverb or digital signal processing (DSP) on every track just because you can. You can avoid this by giving your signal routing a more natural quality and using bussing on your reverb, placing performers or instruments into logical groups, using group compression, and using summing to reinforce those relationships. These are just a few routing ideas.
By the way the focusrite EQ, pre-amp was designed at the request of Sir George Martin.
Thanks for your thoughts Eric
thank you. nice presentation, graham. would be interesting to see a dynamic range meter on this master, too.
cheers.
Great info as usual. Thanks Graham!
Great video Graham! Thanks heaps! You have put it all in a nutshell.
Thanks again for a great video. Since starting recording other artists (and let me get paid for it)than myself, they also want their songs mastered. I tell them, that I can make their songs louder and that Mastering is a discipline of it’s own.
The few productions I made, did make it on CD’s and (local) radio without being laughed at, so it probably hasn’t been a total disaster.
This video, however, again did show a few techniques, that I will adapt on the spot and of which I’m sure, will improve my productions.
Have a wonderfull weekend!
SSL Buss compressor is great for gluing things together in a mix and also a little of tape saturation. I find it very useful! Thanks Graham!
Awesome tutorial Graham! Great song too – love the guitar riff.
Thanks Adam!
I was also a huge Soundgarden fan. I remember trying to match that high register on Loud Love and Little Joe. Their full expression matched where I was at more than any other band of that time. I’m grateful to have had them in my ears through those times.
Great song Graham. Do you ever put a True Peak Limiter on your track to confirm that you’re not exceeding your ceiling? Even with a conservative ceiling of 1-1.5dB on my Brickwall Limiter, I still see True Peak ‘Overs’ when I look for them.
Never used one.
I know others have mentioned this in the past, but I need to put in a recomendation for the Sample Magic A/B plug-in. This makes referencing so much easier with the ability to have up to six reference songs pre-loaded, as well as the ability to loop, say, just the chorus or what have you. You can match levels inside the plug in as well. Really handy tool, for anyone who uses reference tracks for tracking mixing and mastering. I think it’s currently about $70 US, and it will be the best money you ever spent on a plugin,
Cheers,