where is mastering in the workflow of making music and what exactly is the process?
its time of the year
Its the very last thing.
Bring the mix to suitable loudness-es (for cd, streaming etc), make very subtle corrections and optimizations if need be.
Make sure it translates reasonably well, meaning it sound as good as possible in your speakers, headphones, car, crappy phone etc.
You can think of "mastering" as in master channel in the mixer, i.e. the last thing you do (as said above). Also pertains to making sure a collection of tracks (e.g. an album) is level and consistent in volume and quality, which I'm not going to touch on further. In terms of singles, theoretically if you mix well enough, you don't need to do anything on master.
I like to keep it minimal, I do most of my work in the mix, then throw on a limiter for the handful of stray peaks. You could be more aggressive with it. In fact there's any number of things you could do depending on the style and goals of whatever you're doing, e.g. I've heard of people throwing on distortion on master. I wouldn't, but it would fall in the realm of mastering if you were to do that.
The process can be as simple or complex as you want to make it though. The thing I'll say is that if your mix sucks, you can only do so much to save it in master, e.g. you can't really fix frequency masking without going in the mix.
I would also say that the process of making sure it sounds good on all kinds of different system is better done in the mix, but that's semantics and ultimately a situational/workflow choice/debate
I like to do it the sandwich way. I put my favorite mix/master buss effects before I start working on the music, then I record and mix the song through them using a top-down sorta approach. And when the song is almost complete, I tweak those master effects to take my mix to a higher level. B) At the very end, I slap Ozone's Match EQ and Gullfoss to polish everything up nicely.
Mmmh..
Well, it depends what type of music you want to master.
To my part, I think you need to train first in any genre.
Then focus on what you like most.
If I ever buy a guitar I would become a guitarist and master that.
But you see, there is the thing. Once you learn an instrument,
your training is not over. You can learn even more and so on.
So about mastering, the real question is what you want to start with in music?
ZombieGhost
At 10/30/23 09:59 PM, MrSignmeout wrote: where is mastering in the workflow of making music and what exactly is the process?
Everyone has explained it better then I can but all I will say is FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T BRICKWALL YOUR SONGS. That is all lol
"If the world can't provide you comfort, find someone who can comfort you in spite of the world." - Me lol
At 11/1/23 06:57 PM, EvilRaccoon wrote: I always Master first, before composition.
Looks like you've really, mastered the composition. 😎
